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Nov 24, 2024
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Identify the Middle Passage as a liminal space figuring prominently in the work of African-descended writers. Re-examine water as an important motif in the work of African-descended writers.
The middle passage is a liminal space that figures prominently in African American writers' literature. It symbolizes a transition phase between freedom and slavery. African were captured and placed on floating stockades in ships and taken to the west to work as enslaved people. While most died and were thrown overboard, water was never an obstacle to most Africans. Indeed, they captured most Africans along the coastal areas, where they had extensive experience with water. Water is a prominent motif for
African American writers as it impacted their predecessors' lives before, during and after slavery. The middle passage is characterized by an experience that foreshadows the life that the survivors will encounter. In freedom, they experienced the oceans as an expansive body of water with unlimited possibilities. It was different inside the ship as captives. It signified a luminal space between their homeland and an uncertain future. The space inside the big ship on the water was liminal as it sat between states of freedom and slavery. Liminality became the enduring conversation regarding space for enslaved Africans. In African American literature, the water motif is applied to theorize liminal space between trauma and survival, psychological and physical dislocation, and diasporic regional connections.
They conceptualize water as a fluid that is indeterminate and constantly shifting. In the literature, there is a confluence of migration, loss and water for enslaved Africans. The water represented freedom and slavery. The Ocean's water brought the enslaved people to America. A different set of water, the Mississippi river, would take the enslaved people into even harsher conditions downriver. However, water also symbolized freedom for the enslaved people, especially before the enactment of the 1850s fugitive law. An enslaved person who crossed the Ohio river was free. Water featured prominently in enslaved people's lives, and it is a common motif in the work of African-descended writers.
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