The Healing Power of Liminal Spaces in African American Children’s Literature

​By Mark I. West

I recently taught a seminar on urban children’s literature, and I included several books set in Harlem, including Faith Ringgold’s Tar Beach, Virginia Hamilton’s The Planet of Junior Brown, and David Barclay Moore’s The Stars Beneath Our Feet. The central characters in these books spend time in protected spaces where they temporarily escape from reality. 

I started the discussion of Tar Beach by reading aloud the story of eight-year-old Cassie and her love of spending time on the roof of the building where she lives with her family.  The story reminded me of the Motown song “Up on the Roof,” and to my students’ horror, I started singing it. “Up on the Roof” is about escaping the “hustling crowd” by climbing “up to the top of the stairs” and spending time in the “trouble proof” space “up on the roof.” This summary equally applies to Tar Beach, but Ringgold’s story goes beyond the theme of escape.

Cassie loves being with her family and neighbors on the “tiny rooftop” that she calls her “Tar Beach.”  Her parents put a mattress on the roof for Cassie to sleep on while the adults are visiting. For Cassie, “Sleeping on Tar Beach was magical. Lying on the roof in the night, with stars and skyscraper buildings all around me, made me feel rich, like I owned all that I could see.” Cassie fantasizes that she can fly. The illustrations depict her soaring above New York City.

Ringgold portrays the rooftop as a liminal space where reality and fantasy merge. In her fantasy flights, Cassie helps her father overcome the racial discrimination that he faces. Within the context of her fantasies, she feels good about herself because she can make life better for her family. Her fantasies correspond to a point that Bruno Bettelheim makes in The Uses of Enchantment about the healing power of fantasy. “While the fantasy is unreal,” Bettelheim writes,” the good feelings it gives us about ourselves and our future are real, and these real good feelings are what we need to sustain us.”

Virginia Hamilton’s The Planet of Junior Brown grew out of an experience Hamilton had while sitting on a park bench in Harlem. She noticed a homeless boy and wondered about his situation. She imagined that he might have a friend and perhaps a caring adult in his life. Drawing on this experience, she created the novel’s three central characters: Buddy, a homeless boy; Junior Brown, an overweight boy who has a low sense of self-esteem; and Mr. Pool, a former teacher who works as a school janitor. These characters come together in a school basement room that includes a working model of the solar system. Mr. Pool presides over this space and makes it available to the boys. 

The mechanical solar system in the center of the room takes on special significance when Mr. Pool declares that this version of the solar system includes “a fantastic ​

planet known as Junior Brown.” Junior Brown likes the idea of having a planet named after him, and he enjoys creating stories about his planet.  For Junior Brown, this experience helps him gain a better sense of self-worth. For Buddy, this room provides him with the sense of security that helps him move beyond being one of the “tough, black children of city streets.” In the process, he begins to imagine a new future for himself.

Like Hamilton, David Barclay Moore spent time in Harlem, and he drew on this experience when writing The Stars Beneath Our Feet. Lolly, the central character, is a twelve-year-old boy who lives in contemporary Harlem.  His life is upended when his older brother is killed in a gang-related incident. Lolly also faces changes in his family situation.  Before the novel’s opening, his parents separated, and his mother’s girlfriend moved into the apartment. Lolly reacts to these events by withdrawing. His depression causes him to lose interest in everything except building with his Legos blocks, an activity he used to do with his brother. 

Lolly comes to the attention of Mr. Ali, a school counselor.  Mr. Ali encourages Lolly to talk about his feelings, but Lolly resists.  Mr. Ali, however, realizes that Lolly’s passion for Legos might provide Lolly with the key to unlocking his repressed emotions.  Mr. Ali repurposes a storage room in the school with the goal of providing Lolly with a place where he can build his Legos creations.  One day after school, Mr. Ali leads Lolly to the door of the storage room and tells Lolly, “Your world awaits!”
 
For the first time since his brother’s death, Lolly feels that he has a place where he is in control.  He initially uses this space to build his “fantasy fortress,” but he soon starts adding other buildings. For each building, he comes up with an accompanying story.  In his words, “I was creating my own new world.” While in this room, Lolly is not just building a community out of Legos blocks; he is rebuilding his sense of self and slowly coming to terms with his emotions related to his brother’s death.

The protagonists in these books all spend time in liminal spaces where the boundaries between reality and fantasy blur.  For my students, these books brought back childhood memories of special places where they, too, felt that reality and fantasy merged.  For one, it was a treehouse that she and her brother built, taking their inspiration from the Magic Tree House series.  For another, it was a walk-in closet where she set up her dollhouse.  When I started the class, I had no idea that these books would spark such lively discussions, but I now realize that these books tap into an aspect of childhood that resonates with students from various backgrounds.  They might not be familiar with the term “liminal space,” but they all can relate to the quasi-magical experience of being in a liminal space.

Mark I. West is a Professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte ​and a member of CLA.