And yet Market Street, as I argue in this article, very much contends with the concerns of Black geographies and Black epistemologies as articulated by Black scholars.
identity is rooted in a historical specificity linked to African diasporic survival, negotiation, and resistance, as George Yancy contends Latinx experiences have their own axis of struggle (p. Market Street is illustrated by a Black man, and its words are written by a non-Black (Latinx) man, a factor that deserves acknowledgment within broader conversations about the importance of #ownvoices writing. To move while Black, Market Street suggests, is to create new possibilities within the confines of limitations, the process of motion a continual and unsettled oscillation. Yet, importantly, other realities also impact the way characters move the carceral regulation of Black people within the United States inevitably shadows this book’s spatial optimism, and Nana’s loving surveillance and careful direction shape the outlines of CJ’s imagination. The geographies of their journey on a city bus privilege communication, alternative epistemologies, and the spatial transcendence of creativity over literalism.
Language and illustrations both work to portray CJ and Nana’s environment as fundamentally flexible, often exceeding the confines of what appears to be possible. This article examines the racialized productions of space in Matt de la Peña and Christian Robinson’s 2015 picturebook Last Stop on Market Street, arguing that depictions of characters’ movements show how Black mobility constitutes a form of resistance to state circumscription.
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