The Classroom as a “Brave Space” in Jacqueline Woodson’s Harbor Me

Abstract

In this essay, I utilize Robert Stepto’s “ritual ground” concept and Ray Oldenburg’s “third place” theory to analyze Jacqueline Woodson’s Harbor Me. I posit that Ms. Laverne repurposes an old art classroom as both a “third place” and a “ritual ground” for her students, and as a result, her students are empowered to create community and find their individual and collective voices.

1. Introduction

In the aftermath of the 2024 US Presidential election, I have experienced a mix of emotions: disappointment, anger, disillusion, and sadness. I am an African American woman who grew up in the integrated American South. While I did not live under Jim Crow, I lived with my parents and around family, friends, and neighbors who did. I heard stories about segregated schools, bathrooms, and modes of transportation. I heard stories about the limited economic and occupational opportunities that African Americans faced and maneuvered around. I heard about the intimidation tactics sanctioned by the southern states to impede African Americans’ constitutional right to vote. However, I also heard stories of resistance, protests, boycotts, and marches. African Americans gained agency, mobilized, fought, faced incarceration, and died for sociopolitical change for themselves and their children.

As a result, the United States moved toward being a more inclusive, though imperfect, country. As I come out of this oppressive funk that has been weighing heavily on me since the 2024 election results were announced, questions have arisen for all educators, including myself, regarding the future of our profession. I have now been a professor in higher education for over twenty years. Resistance to inclusive classroom pedagogy practices has increased in recent years. How has and how will this affect my classroom and students? Will I face criticism, censorship, or termination for discussing social justice, “race”, class, gender, and intersectionality in my university classroom? What has happened to educators’ academic freedom? As I continue to ponder these and other questions, I am reminded of my own story and the stories of many other African Americans. I am reminded that I have touched and improved the lives of many of my students. I am reminded that I have an obligation to continue to build on the legacy of my ancestors—immediate and from long ago—and I have to continue to demonstrate agency and resistance in my classroom. How ironic that as a child of the New South, I am now addressing “safe” and “brave” spaces in this sociopolitical climate. Whereas both types of spaces were needed in the recent past, they are and will be essential going forward since both educators and students will need to be brave.

The African American author Jacqueline Woodson has created “brave spaces” in the children’s literature industry for years. She is a prolific, venerable author of nearly fifty books who has boldly confronted censorship during her career. Her audience is primarily children, especially African American children; however, she has also written books for young adults and adults. Her books discuss topics deemed by some as controversial: death, sexual identity/orientation, interracial relationships, incarceration, and their impacts on the lives of African American children and young adults. In an interview with Hallie Rich, Woodson comments on the way students are negatively impacted by book bans:

It makes us realize how powerful words are, of course, and it also makes me sad about the erasure. It makes me sad that my words are not reaching the young people that I am talking to. I’ve met so many young people who could use the stories that we’re telling as mirrors, just as a way of seeing themselves in the world and understanding their own value.

I know that it is so intentional, the violence that this erasure is connected to—there’s so much violence in this country and in the world. We look at [these bans] and think, ‘Oh, it’s just books’, but it’s so much bigger and connected to so much else that’s going on. And at the heart of it, like always, are the children. It’s the children who carry weight of the burden in this case. They walk into classrooms with empty shelves; they have no libraries at home, and they’re watching books get thrown into the trash. They try to get the books, and people are saying, ‘No, you can’t have this book in your hand’. It makes me very, very sad.

(Rich 2024, p. 35)

Woodson believes in the power of words and the power of stories; she embodies the writer who knows that the pen can be mightier than the sword. In Emily Eakin’s interview, “’I Grew Up in a Southern Family—There was a lot of talking’: Jacqueline Woodson on Her Two New Best Sellers” (Eakin 2018), Woodson says she learned the value and power of telling stories during her own formative years: “I grew up in a Southern family—There was a lot of talking […] More than stories there was transparency: we talked about race, we talked about class, we talked about so much of what it meant to be human in this world, and it helped to have that encapsulated in a story” (Eakin 2018, p. 1). Talking is exactly what takes place in Woodson’s Harbor Me (Woodson 2018). Eakin remarks that in Harbor Me “as in much of Woodson’s work, words hold tremendous power, driving characters apart and, more often, bringing them together, providing the means to bridge differences, superficial and profound” (Eakin 2018, p. 1).

I first came across Woodson’s work during my doctoral studies, and I found her words inspirational. Other scholars and African American authors of Black children’s and young adult literature have found her works impactful too. In “Our Foundation, Our Springboard, The Trailblazing Work of Mildred D. Taylor and Jacqueline Woodson“, Kekla Magoon, an award-winning author of African American children’s and young adult literature, states, “When you look at Taylor’s or Woodson’s individual bodies of work, they are remarkable and groundbreaking. Taken together, they form a powerful foundation that I and all the Black writers working today are fortunate enough to stand on” (Magoon 2021). Her words are reminiscent of Alice Walker’s statement about Zora Neale Hurston as the foremother of contemporary African American women writers in Walker’s essay, “In Search of our Mothers’ Gardens” (1983). In a conversation with African American children’s literature scholar Rudine Sims Bishop, Woodson says the following about Harbor Me:

I started writing Harbor Me in 2014 or 2015, just going around the country and seeing the issues that young people were struggling with and thinking about my own childhood and what I was struggling with. This made me want to write about the need for us to take care of each other. I was born in the ‘60s and went through the ages of actual letter writing, actual talking on the telephone, actually sitting down and talking face-to-face to each other. Actually touching each other and seeing what happened when you said something that was hurtful to someone. Going from that to the age of the internet and the smart phone and all these ways in which we can each be in our own little bubble and where information gets disseminated so quickly—it’s very easy to flip from a mass shooting to a cute kitten. And I’ve been thinking about the way in which it is so easy nowadays to not engage with the world. That was something that I was thinking about a lot in terms of writing Harbor Me.

(Woodson 2018, pp. 33–34)

Many of Woodson’s protagonists struggle with such difficulties as paternal loss and the need for a parental figure(s), reconciliation with the past, conversations between parents and children and peers, forgiveness, finding one’s voice, and seeking and fortifying one’s own identity. Harbor Me follows a comparable vein of difficult struggles.

2. Pedagogy, Literary Criticism, and the Ritual Grounds Concept

During my career, my research areas have varied within African American literature and culture, including textual analyses focused on African American women’s literature, African American children’s and young adult literature, and African American cinema. One of the subjects that I have focused my research on is space, utilizing Stepto’s concept of the ritual ground. In From Beyond the Veil (1977, 1991), Stepto defines the concept as follows:

Those specifically Afro-American spatial configurations within the structural topography that are, in varying ways, elaborate responses to social structure in this world […] [T]hey serve a spatial expression of the tensions and contradictions besetting any reactionary social structure, aggressive or latent, subsumed by a dominate social structure.

(Stepto 1991, p. 69)

These dual spatial locations, “ritual grounds”, can have unique symbolic meanings. African American communities can be ritual grounds, namely “Black spaces” where Black people are generally separated from surrounding “white spaces”, which suggests an illusion of protection from white oppression/supremacy. Using Stepto’s concept, I have examined such spaces as the general store in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), the basement in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952), the school in Jacqueline Woodson’s Maizon at Blue Hill (1992), and the neighborhoods in Colson Whitehead’s Sag Harbor (2009), Spike Lee’s film, Do the Right Thing (1989), and Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give (2017). In my classroom, I have argued that the United States itself is a ritual ground for African Americans since the country now affords more socioeconomic, educational, and political opportunities while still needing to address unprogressive attitudes towards equity and inclusion. However, in more recent years, the “dual conflict” within these spaces has become more complicated and complex. For example, increased socio-political pressures from politically right-leaning entities to end practices such as diversity, equity, and inclusion have tried to make “white spaces” increasingly more difficult for African Americans. As a result, I have begun to explore various other spatial theoretical concepts to better express this psychological positionality of Black bodies in predominately white spaces in contemporary America.

Over my career, I have observed demographic changes in the classroom and have observed the needs of my students change and multiply. For example, more students have critical thinking deficiencies and are more difficult to engage with in the classroom—all examples of lingering COVID-19 pandemic effects; in fact, it has made me rethink my pedogeological approaches and even my rationale for becoming a professor. Whether teaching at a predominately white institution (PWI) or a Historically Black College or University (HBCU), I have focused on creating a student-focused classroom and using student-focused pedagogies; for example, I often use small groups. In the past, I formed the student groups; however, in my current classroom, I ask students at times to select their own groups to encourage more individual, guided autonomy in the classroom. Group discussion sessions are timed, enabling students to grapple with the concept(s) and topics together on a small scale (lower stakes) while staying on task. This setting typically allows students to feel more secure in expressing their thoughts than in front of the entire class. This approach gives quiet students an opportunity to more easily express themselves. Often, they gain confidence and feel more comfortable in the classroom, choosing to speak up in class on their own. I used to call on students, and I still do occasionally. However, I am more careful when I do so and with whom I select because I am aware of the increasing number of students who are dealing with increased anxiety and mental health issues.1 Through observation, I call on students who have shown themselves to feel comfortable expressing their points of view in front of large groups. I have been endeavoring to make my classroom feel like a “safe space”.

Brian Arao and Kristit Clemens, in “From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces: A New Way to Frame Dialogue around Diversity and Social Justice”, define “safe spaces” as “environments [where instructors] hope will be reassuring to participants who feel anxious about sharing their thoughts and feelings regarding ... sensitive and controversial issues” (Arao and Clemens 2013, p. 135). Whereas I followed this definition more closely earlier in my career, I find that I must employ “safe spaces” even more now because students, who have disclosed their lived experiences to me through essays, emails, and discussions, are bringing more personal traumas into the classroom. For example, before assigning Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), I give students a “trigger warning” because someone may have been a victim of sexual assault, and I do not want to inadvertently elicit student anxiety, which would immediately negate the “safe space” environment that I am trying to create in the classroom. Additionally, students have the option to read an alternative text as a substitute, for example, Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (1959).

I am conscious that teachers’ actions can trigger students’ traumas, intentionally or unintentionally, in other ways as well. The reactivation of students’ traumas can happen purposely (i.e., an instructor intentionally misgendering a student) or unconsciously (i.e., an instructor accidentally mispronouncing a student’s name); each instance can lead to identity conflicts within the student and to hostility between the student and instructor in the classroom. Both scenarios can negatively impact the student’s safe learning environment.

3. Third Place Theory

In order to create a more comfortable learning environment for students, I am incorporating elements of the “third place” in the classroom. “Third places”, according to sociologist Ray Oldenburg, are informal public locations such as coffee shops and hair salons (i.e., hangouts) where people find and create community. Oldenburg suggests the following:

[T]hough characterizations of the third place as a mere haven of escape from home and work are inadequate, they do possess a virtue—they invite comparison(sic). … The raison d’etra (sic) of the third place rests upon its differences from the other settings of daily life and can best be understood by comparison to them.

(Oldenburg 2023, p. 23)

“Third places” are locations where people build community and feel free to express themselves freely. “Third places” are locations where people can hold uncomfortable dialogues while feeling sheltered from judgment because a community of trust and acceptance has been formed there. Moreover, “Third places exist on neutral ground and serve to level their guests to a condition of social equality. Within these places, conversations are the primary activity and the major vehicle for the display and appreciation of human personality and individuality” (Oldenburg 2023, p. 45). Granted, an actual “neutral ground” is an unrealistic romanticized notion; even so, creating spaces where people feel more comfortable to express themselves as individuals is possible, if not perfect. As Oldenburg posits, “third places” have the following characteristics: possess home qualities like comfortability, encourage inclusivity, inspire conversation, are accessible and accommodating, have regular participants, and maintain an unassuming, playful mood/atmosphere.2 Many of these aspects are present in Room 501, which Ms. Laverne, the teacher in Harbor Me, establishes for her students; however, the one that is particularly resonant with Ms. Laverne (and myself) is conversation as the main activity. Oldenburg says the following:

In third places, the agenda of conversation is not dominated by the mundane matters of home maintenance, children’s braces, who’s going to take one child here and the other one there, and the like, nor by that tether that repeatedly brings workplace talk back to the office or shop. Novelty in the third place conversation is lent by the predictable changes but unpredictable direction that it always takes.

(Oldenburg 2023, p. 51)

Technically, the classroom is more of a second place for students since this is the primary location where students “work”. Their occupation is to learn the material and skills. However, to better enable students to learn those skills and course material, students can “work” better when classrooms embrace elements of the third place, especially conversation.

4. Textual Analysis: Ms. Laverne, the Brave Educator and Woodson’s Ideal

In Woodson’s Harbor Me, the teacher, Ms. Laverne, is an educator who creates a third place (Room 501) within the school for her special needs students, and it is within [her classroom] that “the seeds of social transformation [are] cultivated” (Kelly 2018, p. 387). Haley, the novel’s protagonist, recollects: “There were eight of us then. Our small class had come together because the school wanted to try something new: Could they put eight kids together in a room with one teacher and make something amazing? Eight special (sic) kids” (Woodson 2018, p. 5). Ms. Laverne is open and communicative with her students, explaining to them in age-appropriate language what the space is for and how the students can use it. As a result of Ms. Laverne’s actions, this “third place” becomes a “safe space” when the students take ownership of the space, renaming Room 501 to the ARTT Room, and ultimately, a “brave space” for the students as they begin to talk freely and share deep conversations with one another. According to Emily Eakin,

Telling your story forges bonds. In Harbor Me, Haley, an 11-year-old girl, records the conversations she and five classmates have on Friday afternoons out of earshot of their perceptive teacher, who understands they need an ‘ARTT’—‘A Room to Talk’. The talk Haley’s device captures is serious indeed: Racism, deportation, incarceration and the death of a parent are just some of the issues these students are dealing with.

(Eakin 2018, p. 1)

More specifically, this middle-grade novel is narrated by an older Haley who reminisces about her experiences when she was in elementary school.

Haley’s matured perspective colors the depictions of Ms. Laverne. She and her classmates (Holly, Amari, Tiago, Ashton, and Esteban) see their teacher as a compassionate, supportive adult who cares about their wellbeing: “We loved her immediately” (Woodson 2018, p. 6). Haley says the following:

Outside, a blue jay perches on the edge of a branch. Ailanthus tree. Tree of Heaven. Ms. Laverne taught us that. It’s the same tree the girl in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn saw from her fire escape. The thing about that tree was it could grow anywhere. And keep growing. And that was the metaphor (sic): that even when things got really hard for everyone in that story—even when the dad died and the mom had to scrub more and more floors to make money, even when the kids didn’t have anything to eat for days and the apartment was freezing—the tree kept growing. The main character, her name was Francie—she was like that tree. Ms. Laverne said that all of us—Esteban, Tiago, Holly, Amari, Ashton and even me—we’re like that tree too.

(Woodson 2018, p. 2)

To her students, Ms. Laverne is an engaging teacher who encourages their intellectual and personal growth. Because of these character traits, she and the school administrators have noticed the educational needs of these particular students and have taken action to meet those needs by creating an experimental fifth/sixth-grade classroom.

As Haley remembers,

We had all been in the big classrooms before, and our learning felt like a race we were losing while the other kids sped ahead. We made believe we didn’t care that we learned differently, but we knew we did. And the school knew we did. The school knew we got laughed at and teased in the big yard and that some days we faked stomachaches and sore throats to stay home.

(Woodson 2018, p. 6)

When Ms. Laverne takes students to the room and introduces the space to them for the first time, she says: “Every Friday, from now until the end of the school year, the six of you will leave my classroom at two p.m. and come into Room 501. You’ll sit in this circle and you’ll talk. When the bell rings at three, you’re free to go home” (Woodson 2018, p. 16). Although the students are reluctant to take the opportunity, Ms. Laverne convincingly explains the merits of the new spaces and the chance to talk to one’s peers. She gives the students the framework, explaining the purpose and function of the space, setting the standards/parameters that the students should meet. As Woodson states,

I think it’s so important that teachers know that they set the tone in their classrooms and they decide what’s safe and what’s unsafe for their students. Whatever their backstory is will come into that room, so it’s important for all of us [writers, librarians, and educators] to do the work and think about our biases and think about what our ideas are around race and economic class and gender and sexuality and what our dreams are for our students. When I walk into a class and I see a first-grade Black boy, I’m like, ‘Okay, college professor, go do that, dream big, dream hard, don’t dream along the lines of stereotypes’. When I go into classrooms, I just see so much potential and power and possibility in the young people. And my hope is that teachers continue to do that. I know there are so many teachers out there who are doing that work and are truly, truly seeing this in the way Liz Laverne saw her students. And I just hope we keep on.

(Bishop 2020, p. 35)

Woodson has created her ideal version of a contemporary teacher in Ms. Laverne.

As the students begin to understand the room’s purpose, they warm to why Ms. Laverne is setting up the space. Haley says, “That day, Ms. Laverne pushed us out-from the Familiar to the Unfamiliar” (Woodson 2018, p. 21). Moving into the “unfamiliar” can cause discomfort, so it is useful when one can have the support of others while dealing with those circumstances. The students assist each other through “unfamiliar” emotional territory—the complexities of it—throughout the academic school year by listening to their peers’ stories about personal and familial problems.

As an example of the students embracing the space, Amari, an African American student, renames the space: “Okay … I’m vibing it. The old art room is the new A-R-T-T room y’all” (Woodson 2018, p. 19). Ms. Laverne affirms the new name, saying, “…yes, Amari- the A-R-T-T room is beyond clever” (Woodson 2018, p. 19). Over the novel, each classmate shares their concerns and fears about home and school with one another and offers each other support. From Esteban’s fears over his father’s detainment and possible deportation to Ashton’s worries due to bullying for being white at a predominantly Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) school to Hayley’s unease over her father’s re-entrance into her life after his incarceration for killing her mother in a car accident, the students become increasingly comfortable with one another, develop community, and bravely share with one another.

The students also trust each other with their dreams. Haley ruminates, “I miss Tiago’s dreams of the sea and Esteban’s poems and all the stories we finally trusted each other enough to tell” (Woodson 2018, p. 3). Their community encourages trust and validation of their lived experiences. Haley thinks back: “Once we circled around each other, and listened. Or maybe what matters most is that we were heard” (Woodson 2018, p. 3). Sometimes, students listen as another tells their story; other times, one of the former listeners becomes the speaker. Each encourages the other to find their voice, and each does so at their own pace. In “From ‘safe’ to ‘brave’ spaces: pedagogical practices of exclusion to promote inclusion within & beyond skateboarding”, Robert Petrone and Becky Beal suggest that brave spaces are “social spaces that not only offer a greater sense of inclusivity but also the recognition that participants may always have to re-negotiate and navigate the terms of participation” (Petrone and Beal 2024, p. 2). Throughout the novel, the students set the parameters of the space, and Haley records their stories within the space to document their year together and to ensure that they will be remembered.

There is some resistance to Ms. Laverne’s pedagogical strategy. For instance, one parent complains and has her child removed from the course at the beginning of the academic year. In this current sociopolitical climate where elements of fear and bigotry are couched as “parents’ rights” and teachers’ expertise have become points of contention, this fictional depiction represents current realities like curriculum battles during district school board meetings, local school board meetings, instances of book banning, state rejections of the Advanced Placement (AP) African American Studies course, and misinformation about Critical Race Theory on the national political stage. Jainia Hoover, a high school teacher, says the following:

This is one reason why I get so frustrated at all the bad takes circulating among politicians, social media, and the news related to critical race theory and the teaching of America’s racial history in K-12 classrooms. The reality is that kids are talking about race, systems of oppression, and our country’s ugly past anyway—from media coverage to last summer’s protests to even this very controversy itself, my students are absorbing these conversations and want to know more.

(Hoover 2021)

Hoover goes on to say the following:

Most of the people discussing critical race theory aren’t really discussing the theory itself, which is something taught in some law schools, but not—as far as I know—in most or any K-12 schools. Instead, what these critics seem to be talking about is a brain dump of unrelated buzzwords related to hot button topics in society, such as racism, privilege, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Never mind that most haven’t been in a K-12 history classroom since they were enrolled.

(Hoover 2021)

Even though Hoover’s statements indicate that mass conservative hysteria surrounding Critical Race Theory and parents’ rights is unwarranted and ill-informed, the current sociopolitical climate still has had an incalculable impact on student learning. In a recent BBC story by Ana Faguy, “Trump’s pledge to axe the Department of Education explained” (Faguy 2024), the reason offered by Republicans to eliminate the department is that the department has been “pushing what they describe as ‘woke’ political ideology onto children, including on gender and race. They want the agency’s authority handed to the US States, which run most education Matters”. One can only speculate on how the student would have benefited from Ms. Laverne’s classroom experiences. To better explore how the classroom improves the lives of African American children, I will focus on the stories and outcomes of the two African American students in the BIPOC classroom: Haley and Amari.

5. Textual Analysis: Haley’s Story

There is a good reason why Haley loves stories; it is the main way that she has been able to connect with her deceased mother and her incarcerated father. When she first introduces the recorder to her classmates, some think of the recorder as a joke, and others are reluctant to speak. Holly, Haley’s best friend, lets them know the purposes: “It’s for stories”, Holly said, grabbing the recorder from me, turning it one and speaking into it. “It’s for us getting remembered when we’re not here anymore” (Woodson 2018, p. 40). Esteban even says “I like that it’s for memory”, which harkens back to a Woodson trope (Woodson 2018, p. 40). As the reader learns throughout the novel, Haley holds few direct memories of her parents since she has been separated from them since the age of three. Woodson even highlights the distance quality of Haley’s relationship with her father by never revealing her father’s name to the reader. It is only through stories her uncle, Steve, relays to her. Later, after befriending Holly, she learns additional information about her mother through Kira, Holly’s mother.

The death and subsequent absence of Haley’s mother has a major impact on her life. She says when her uncle asks if she remembers her mother, “Just that picture … The one where it’s the back of her and I can see her hand and nails” (Woodson 2018, p. 29). She wants to identify with her mother, seeking to find and use the same shade of red nail polish that her mother is wearing in the photograph. Another way Haley connects with her mother is through her hair. Haley says she got her red hair color from her father and her kinky hair texture from her mother. Steve has difficulties managing her hair and is relieved when, one day, Kira approaches him after school and offers to do Haley’s hair. In a Euro-centric dominated society, “Black/African American youth have described their experiences and emotional pain” associated with their natural hair, and parents must be aware that “[t]hese experiences [can] [impact] their self-image, engagement in physical activity, and emotional well-being” (Henning et al. 2002, p. 76). Even so, Haley shows a positive attitude toward her hair; in fact, her hair journey leads her to Holly and Holly’s mother, Kira. The Friday nights Haley spends with Holly and Holly’s mother while Holly’s mother does her hair leads to Haley and Holly developing a deep friendship. The ARTT peers do not know that they have known each other for years until Haley shares her story. During one Friday night, Haley learns that Kira knew her mother and shares information about her mother with Haley. Haley remembers, “[S]he talked about my mother—what she remembered, how they lost touch, how she heard about the accident” (Woodson 2018, p. 156). Through Kira’s stories, Haley feels nearer to her mom.

After Holly encourages Haley to share her story with their classmates and to stop hiding behind her recorder, Haley finds her classmates quite supportive, and they tell her that her story gives them strength and makes them feel thankful for their own parents. Through growing perspectives and comparisons, the ARTT peers continue to develop in understanding and maturity through listening to one another’s stories. Overall, with Haley’s story, Woodson explores many of the same tropes examined in her novels: the loss of parents, the role of mother (parental) figures, and the place of memory and forgiveness in the lives of African American children and young adults. Here, the value and utility of the “third place” is demonstrated.

6. Textual Analysis: Amari’s Story

With Amari’s story, Woodson directly addresses issues that affect African American children/young adults, especially boys. She depicts “the talk”, which is the time when African American parents must sit their Black children down and discuss racism and discrimination, how it will affect their lives, and how they must act safely in such situations. Most recently, the talk has centered around interactions with police officers. Tracy R. Whitaker and Cudore L. Snell state, “Contrary to popular thought, “the Talk” is not about avoiding criminal behavior; rather, it is about avoiding the perception (sic) of criminal behavior. Unlike other important parent–child conversations, “the Talk” is not about helping the child take responsibility for the child’s own actions; rather it is about preparing a child to take responsibility for the actions of the adults [they] may encounter (Burnett 2012; O’Neal 2015; Williams 2014)” (Whitaker and Snell 2016, p. 304). It is obvious that Woodson is referencing the 2014 case of twelve-year-old Tamir Rice of Cleveland, OH, who was shot by police while playing with a toy gun, in Harbor Me. While sharing his story about his father’s “talk” with him, Amari says, “The cops who shot that kid in the park didn’t even ask him any questions, Amari said. Just came in the park and shot him right away. And then when his big sister tried to run to him, they didn’t even let her go to him” (Woodson 2018, p. 68; Stone and Socia 2019). Additionally, one cannot overlook the slight similarity in the names Tamir and Amari. It has been well documented that African American children are treated as adults due to negative stereotypes. This adultification of African American children then justifies the mistreatment and overreactions of adults towards them. Whitaker and Snell note that “[t]he time for ‘the Talk’ generally occurs at the onset of adolescence, or in the space when Black boys morph into ‘being seen as suspect instead of sweet” (Whitaker and Snell 2016, p. 304). As Amari shares his story with the ARTT Room peers, he is in despair and even shows some anger toward Caucasian Ashton, who cannot understand the depth of his plight in America as a Black boy. Amari “didn’t say anything to Ashton” (Woodson 2018, p. 69) when he tried to include himself with Esteban or Tirage as a possible target of the police.

Amari is beginning his initiation into double consciousness, and his childhood is beginning to fade away. Author and sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois coined the phrase in The Souls of Black Folk (1903) as follows:

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of the world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.

(Du Bois 1903, p. 694)

While Amari sees himself, the police could see a dangerous “adult” thug, a stereotype connected to the Black Buck stereotype derived during American slavery. In many African American children’s and young adult’s books, African American characters experience this moment of recognition for the first time and begin pondering how and what it will mean for them to grow up Black in America. When Amari has difficulty explaining to Ashton that he does not hate him, he explains that he believes it is not fair how they have to maneuver in the world differently due to “race”. Haley empathizes with Amari and expresses the words for him: “It’s not fair. It’s not fair that you’re a boy and Ashton’s a boy and he can do something you can’t do anymore. That’s not freedom” (Woodson 2018, p. 70). Unlike Haley and Holly and, to an extent, Esteban and Tiago, Ashton has difficulty sympathizing with Amari because of his “racial” background. The others seem to have already experienced double consciousness directly or indirectly through their parents—Esteban’s father being seized by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Tiago through the public denigration of his mother being yelled at for speaking Spanish. Holly has Black parents, and Haley is a half-Black, biracial child. Amari and Ashton are upset with one another because Amari believes Ashton does not understand his plight and has an advantage in life due to his whiteness. Here, the “third place” is showing characteristics of physical ritual grounds, and tensions are present.

In “Irony and Parody in Jacqueline Woodson’s Harbor Me: A Postmodernism Study”, Aulina and Hanifa posit “that irony and parody are used for illustrating and social condition“ (Aulina and Hanifa 2021, p. 44). They argue that Holly’s statement “This is supposed to be America. The land of the free and the home of the brave” (Woodson 2018, p. 121) is ironic:

Holly’s expectation about America is not in accordance with the real condition. It is because, (sic) the six children who are not American have to study in another classroom from American students. They cannot play with children who have white skin. That situation prove (sic) that America is not free, (sic) in this land there are some rules which make them cannot feel the freedom as like other kids. Therefore, they take an interpretation from those irony, (sic) that American is not the land of the free for them.

(Aulina and Hanifa 2021, p. 48)

I do not agree with their argument. I can agree that Holly’s statement sarcastically addresses the hypocrisy of the ideal of America versus the actual experience of African Americans living in America. Woodson’s texts are typically rooted in the realistic, lived experiences of African American children, not in irony and parody. According to Magoon, “Woodson’s work [is] groundbreaking because it [brings] us to the present, into the homes, lives, and hearts of young Black people living through ordinary days, juggling fear, joy lost, laughter, and love in ways that people do” (Magoon 2021, p. 4). Additionally, Aulina and Hanifa mention that the students “cannot play with children who have white skin” and that the students are separated from other students in the school because of skin color. In fact, Ashton is in the classroom with Holly and the others. Still, the writers may be suggesting that the students’ actual school is separated by socioeconomic barriers, which means that the majority of the student population is Black, Indigenous, and People of Color; even so, the authors seem to be focusing on the actual classroom, not the school as a whole.

Woodson also uses Amari’s story to critique racial profiling and white privilege. This appears when Amari (and the others) confront Ashton, the only white kid in the room, about his white privilege. In fact, Ashton is being bullied by older students at the school and experiences here in a BIPOC space what African American and BIPOC children often experience—social isolation and alienation—in predominately white spaces. He says that “… on my first day here, almost every kid seemed to be some shade of brown. I had never seen so many brown .. and black people” (Woodson 2018, p. 95). These encounters potentially allow him to partially identify with Amari, Esteban, and Tiago as boys of color in a predominately white society. Interestingly, he experiences his own version of double consciousness. As Haley explains to him, “You got the white pass, Ashton. Until now” (Woodson 2018, p. 96). He is learning about his white privilege—how it impacts his life and those around him. Through conversations in the ARTT Room, the children witness each other’s perspectives on serious social issues and conduct complicated discussions. The integrity of the community that they have built in the third place withstands the tensions. If they did not have a “third place”, these issues would not have been talked about nor directly addressed; consequently, they would not have grown from the incident.

Further, the ARTT peers show that they are taking their shared experiences and growth into the world—beyond their third place. Amari, Esteban, and Tiago (and sometimes Haley and Holly, too) start walking with Ashton to protect him from the eighth-grade bullies. Haley recalls the following:

That day, I remember all of us in the ARTT room leaning in toward each other. But what is frozen in my mind, even more than that, is later the same day, Ashton, Amari, Esteban and Tiago left the school together walking four across. Me and Holly walked behind them. A double wall against the neckers [the eighth-grade bullies] who were waiting right outside the school yard.

(Woodson 2018, p. 98)

In the face of a unified front, the eighth graders back off. This illustrates not only friendship but also solidarity beyond “race” and class, as well as the powerful impact of the “third place” on their lives.

7. Conclusions

As a writer, Woodson does not shy away from difficult issues in her texts. She embraces the role of brave writer, explaining the following:

I guess it’s an interesting question because I see the situations as troubling only in connection to the way our country is set up so that we have issues of mass incarceration, education disparity, and even economic disparity. Even if we look to the present day, we can see the issue of deportation and young people in prisons because of their immigration status. I think young people, and hopefully all people, are thinking about these issues and having questions about them. To me literature has always worked as a way to help begin a dialogue Through story and help create understanding.

(Bishop 2020, p. 31)

Consequently, Woodson is calling us—the readers, the teachers, the librarians, the parents—to create these third spaces for African American children in our schools, homes, and communities for the benefit of our children.

Because Ms. Laverne and supportive school administrators recognize that the social dynamics of a classroom can induce physical ritual ground characteristics—positive and negative outcomes—for students, she offers an experimental space to them. This third place within the school enables Haley and her classmates to build a community and feel safe enough to face their current circumstances, be brave, be themselves, and grow toward their full potential. As Richard Kyte, in Finding Your Third Place: Building Happier Communities (and Making Great Friends Along the Way), states, “Communities with a high degree of social capital have people who are more likely to participate, share ideas, and work toward the common good than those in communities with low social capital. People in such communities also report that they trust one another and the institutions upon which they depend” (Kyte 2024, p. 51). Increasingly, in elementary and secondary classrooms, and even higher education lecture halls, both students and teachers are facing the elimination or marginalization of “safe spaces”. This will likely only increase in the foreseeable future. Hence, we must resist this movement and make our classrooms “brave spaces”. Within these brave spaces, “social transformation, especially within potentially fraught ‘brave’ spaces, occurs through an iterative process of learning about (sic) social systems and acting upon them (sic)” (Petrone and Beal 2024, p. 5). African American ancestors have done their part, risking their lives for Black livelihood and prosperity. Now that Black people are being pushed backward in society, we must forge a new way forward. This is African American educators’ moment, and we must be on the right side of history. This is our time.