Recuperative Spaces in African American Children’s Literature (article)

I recently taught a graduate seminar on urban children’s literature, and we read several books set in Harlem. We started with Faith Ringgold’s picture book Tar Beach (1991), then Virginia Hamilton’s The Planet of Junior Brown (1971), and finally David Barclay Moore’s The Stars Beneath Our Feet (2017). In discussing these books, my students and I noticed that their central characters all spend time in secluded spaces. While in these safe spaces, the characters let their guards down, engage their imaginations, form emotional bonds with others, and cultivate their sense of self-worth. These spaces allow the characters to confront and deal with their emotions in ways that would be impossible to do in their usual urban environments. In a sense, these are recuperative spaces where psychological healing can take place.

Tar Beach: The Freedom of a Rooftop

I started off our discussion of Tar Beach by reading the book aloud to the students. I am sure that they were not expecting to be read to in a graduate course, but I wanted the students to experience this picture book in the same way that young children usually experience picture books. I opened the book and started reading about eight-year-old Cassie Louise Lightfoot and her love of spending time on the roof of the tenement building where she lives with her family during the 1930s. While reading aloud and talking about the illustrations, I was reminded of an old Motown hit by The Drifters called “Up on the Roof.”  I grew up listening to Motown songs on my transistor radio, so I happen to remember the words to this song. Much to my students’ horror, I started singing “Up on the Roof” right in the middle of my presentation. I am a terrible singer, but the lyrics seemed so apropos to the book that I just couldn’t help myself.

“Up on the Roof” is all about escaping the “hustling crowd” and “rat race noise” by climbing “up to the top of the stairs” and spending time in the “trouble proof” space “up on the roof.”  This summary of the song equally applies to Ringgold’s Tar Beach, but Ringgold’s story goes beyond the theme of escape. In the book, Cassie relishes the time she spends with her family and next-door neighbors on their “tiny rooftop,” which she calls her “Tar Beach.”  Her parents put a mattress on the rooftop for Cassie and her little brother to sleep on while the adults are visiting and playing cards.

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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” (Tar Beach,5). In the context of the story, Cassie fantasizes that she can fly. The illustrations depict her soaring above New York City, claiming the George Washington Bridge and other landmarks as her own.

Ringgold portrays the rooftop as a liminal space where reality and fantasy merge. On the one hand, the rooftop is a place that is associated with real-world details, which is reflected in the following scene: “Tonight we’re going up to Tar Beach. Mommy is roasting peanuts and frying chicken, and Daddy will bring home a watermelon. Mr. and Mrs. Honey will bring the beer and their old green card table” (Tar Beach, 21). On the other hand, the rooftop functions as the launching pad for Cassie’s night flights around the city. In Cassie’s mind, the rooftop is above all else a safe space where she feels secure enough to let her imagination take flight.

In her fantasies, Cassie can help her father overcome the real-world discrimination he faces because he is half African American and half American Indian. Within the context of her fantasy world, she feels good about herself because she can make life better for her whole family. Her imagination corresponds to a point that Bruno Bettelheim makes the healing power of fantasy: “While the fantasy is unreal,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” (The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales, 1977, 126). For Cassie, her good feelings are inextricably linked to the time she spends on the rooftop. The story concludes with Cassie introducing her younger brother, Be Be, to her fantasy world: “I have told him it’s very easy, anyone can fly. All you need is somewhere to go that you can’t get to any other way. The next thing you know, you’re flying among the stars” (Tar Beach,24).

The Planet of Junior Brown: The Liminal Space of a Secret Room

Virginia Hamilton’s The Planet of Junior Brown also involves a liminal space where the central characters’ imaginations take flight. Written while Hamilton was living in Manhattan, The Planet of Junior Brown grew out of an experience she had while sitting with her young daughter in a park. She noticed a homeless boy nearby and began wondering about the nature of life. She imagined that this boy might have a friend and perhaps a caring adult

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 in his life. Drawing on this experience, she created the three central characters in the novel: Buddy Clark, a homeless boy living on the streets of Harlem; Junior Brown, an overweight boy who has a low sense of self-esteem even though he is a musical prodigy; and Mr. Pool, a former science teacher who works as a school janitor. These three characters come together in a secret room in a school basement complete with a mechanical model of the solar system.

For the three main characters, the secret room in the school basement is a protected space where they can take shelter from all of the negative influences that surround them. Mr. Pool presides over this space and makes it available to Buddy and Junior Brown when he realizes that these boys need help. The two boys feel as if they can let their guards down when they are here. The mechanical solar system located 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” (Planet of Junior Brown, 4). Junior Brown is intrigued with the idea of having a planet named after him, and he soon begins to come up with fantasy stories related to this new planet. For Junior Brown, having a planet named after him eventually helps him gain a better sense of self-worth.

Over the course of the novel, this room is where the boys forge a relationship with each other. While in this safe space, they learn about each other’s problems and begin to look out for each other. 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” (The Planet of Junior Brown, 13). He sets out to help Junior Brown, and in the process, he begins to imagine a new future for himself and others. The room also becomes a healing place for Mr. Pool. As is stated in the novel, “Only now, through his work with Buddy Clark and the example of Buddy’s devotion to Junior Brown, did Mr. Pool slowly begin to believe in himself again” (13). Although they eventually have to vacate the room, the relationships nurtured in this liminal space live on.

The Stars Beneath Our Feet: Legos and Repressed Emotions

David Barclay Moore’s debut novel, The Stars Beneath Our Feet, came out in 2017. Like Hamilton, Moore spent time in Harlem, and he drew on this experience when writing The Stars Beneath Our Feet he reports that “I lived in Harlem for several years and also worked there. During the eight years that I spent as communications coordinator at Harlem’s Children’s Zone, one of the

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country’s most successful anti-poverty organizations, I got to experience Harlem’s people in a different way, a much more intimate way.”  It was “Harlem and its residents inspired much of The Stars Beneath Our Feet” (“A Conversation with David Barclay Moore,” The Stars Beneath Out Feet, Teacher’s Edition, 2017, G9). Lolly Rachpaul, the central character in The Stars Beneath Our Feet, is a 12-year-old boy whose life is upended when his older brother Jermaine is shot in a gang-related incident. In addition to responding to his brother’s violent death, he is facing major changes in his family situation. Shortly before the novel’s opening, his parents separated, and his mother’s girlfriend moved into their apartment. Lolly reacts to these events by withdrawing from his friends and family members. His depression and unfocused anger cause him to lose interest in everything except building with his Lego blocks, an activity he used to do with his brother.

Lolly’s anti-social behavior brings him to the attention of Mr. Ali, a school counselor. He attempts to get Lolly to talk about his feelings, but Lolly seems unable to express his emotions. 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 large storage room in the school intending to provide Lolly with a safe place where he can build his Lego creations. One day after school, Mr. Ali leads Lolly to the door of the storage room and then tells Lolly, “Your world awaits!” (Stars Beneath Our Feet,96). For the first time since the death of his brother, Lolly feels that he has a place where he is in control of his life. After Mr. Ali gives him access to this storage room, he begins thinking of this room as “my world” (96). He initially uses this space to build his “fantasy fortress” (97), 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 and getting lost in it” (97). This repurposed storage room becomes a healing place for Lolly. While he is in this room, he is not just building a community out of Lego blocks; he is also rebuilding his damaged sense of self and slowly coming to terms with his repressed emotions associated with his brother’s death. As he tells Mr. Ali, “I feel like Jermaine’s there too when I’m building” (108).

As the story progresses, Mr. Ali lets an autistic girl named Big Rose also use the storage room to create her own Lego buildings. At first, Lolly is not pleased that he has to share this room

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with Big Rose, but gradually he warms to the idea: “It’s different having somebody else in there with me, even though she stays on the other side of the room working on her stuff. I kinda feel like we’re working on something together” (Stars Beneath Our Feet, 133). During their time together in the storage room, Lolly and Big Rose slowly become building partners and then friends. The once unused storage room becomes a place where two isolated and unhappy children can bond over Legos blocks, and in the process, begin building a more hopeful future for themselves.

Faith Ringgold, Virginia Hamilton, and David Barclay Moore are by no means the only African American writers who include recuperative spaces in their fiction. As Christine Maksimowicz points out in her article titled “Enchanted Third Spaces: Play and Recuperation in Toni Morrison’s Love” (American Imago,Vol. 76, No. 2, Summer 2019), this theme also runs through some of Toni Morrison’s works. Maksimowicz concludes her analysis of Morrison’s Love (2003) by saying, “Love explores a healing process in and through an imaginative third space where boundaries between past and present, self and other, and death and life no longer hold” (220). Her words also apply to Tar Beach, The Planet of Junior Brown,and The Stars Beneath Our Feet. All three of these books deal with imaginative third spaces where boundaries between reality and fantasy blur and where healing takes place.

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