Engage your students in lively, captivating discussion!

THE LIMINAL is a place, time, or state of being that’s betwixt and between. Neither here nor there. If it’s a place, it might be a staircase, airport, or refugee camp. If it’s a time, it might be a summer of travel, a year of illness, or a period of war. If it’s a state of being, it might be the experience of not fitting into the world’s tidy categories and feeling like you exist somewhere between them. Or it might be the experience of no longer fitting into your own tidy categories but being unable to find a way out of them yet. If this is the case, you didn’t end up there by accident. Something new is emerging in you, and for that to happen, some old things need to fall away. Darkness, confusion, and disorientation are to be expected. Just make sure you let the liminal do its work in you.

THE LIMINAL provides a way to look at the difficult and confusing times in our lives as integral and necessary parts of them. The concept of the liminal does not reference any particular religion but, rather, focuses on the experiences themselves, common to us all, providing a much-needed paradigm for talking about them in a pluralistic society. Inspired by Dr. Timothy Carson’s use of these stories in his liminal studies classes in the Honors College of the University of Missouri, the Tales From the Liminal Study Edition provides discussion questions and writing prompts to help students develop an eye for the liminal in their own lives, and an appreciation for the growth that can come when they let the liminal do its work. 

Bigfoot’s Got a Lover

The Birthday Party

The Stretch Motel

Mistakes May Have Been Made

All He Could Do Is Sing

When They Come for Me

The Ferryman and His Brother

She Saw Gertrude Stein in the Condensation on Her Window

Goodbye, Bonavento

I Followed Schrödinger’s Cat and Here’s What I Found

The Unexpected Consequence of an Unsolicited Revolution

Summoned by a Star

Here’s an excerpt:

At the turn of the 20th century, anthropologist Arnold van Gennep identified broad patterns of renewal within indigenous, agrarian, pre-industrial communities. From his observations of the cultural rites and rituals that were utilized to foster those transitions, he came to understand a particular kind of social transition he named The Rites of Passage. That now well-known phrase became the title of a book by the same name that was published in 1909. These rites not only fostered transition but protected the social group from the danger inherent in potential chaos during such transition. These rites accompanied almost every conceivable passage of life, including birth, matrimony, and death. Further, they honored the changing seasons of nature and marked disasters that afflicted individuals and communities.

The time and space when transitioning through a critical threshold is referred to as “liminality,” based on the Latin root limen, which itself means threshold. In terms of rituals marking rites of passage, the movement includes a preliminal phase, the liminal middle, and reaggregation into a post-liminal reality. This pattern is demonstrated universally in different forms, practiced in many cultures. By the mid-20th century, anthropologist Victor Turner built upon and expanded van Gennep’s work. As he defined society in terms of a structure of positions, his model of rites of passage became one of structure, antistructure, and re-structure.

A person or group moving through the rites of passage became a liminal being, a passage person, and was ritually defined by special names, symbols, practices, and dress. They were typically ushered through the process by tribal elders who act as liminal guides. The cohort of initiates formed a special community around their shared liminality, a status Turner coined communitas.

Here’s an excerpt:

Reflect on the liminal nature of the characters, setting, and/or action in one of the stories, then respond to one of the following prompts:

• What are the liminal aspects of the story? What makes these aspects liminal? What role do they play in the story?

• What challenges does the protagonist face in the liminal? How do they respond to these challenges?

• Is there a guide present to help the protagonist find their way through the liminal? If so, how do they help?

• Does the protagonist make it through the liminal? What did it take?  Are there consequences for remaining in the liminal? How did the protagonist change after moving through the liminal to the other side?

SUMMONED BY A STAR

PREREADING QUESTION: What would you describe as the most difficult season of your life?  What made it so challenging?

Your life begins as a seed, atop a stalk, beneath azure skies, in golden hues of wheat and sun. You sway in the summer breeze on rolling hills of grain until one day you’re mowed down, plunged into the earth, cut off from the light. You tremble in the darkness. Cool drops trickle down to you. Nourished, you send forth a tiny shoot, knowing you weren’t meant for this everlasting night. Mole tunnels through. Worm and Beetle wriggle by. You summon life from your nascent store and a strange new growth anchors you. You send your shoot higher but still there is only darkness.

Beetle waddles again across your path, searching for her own. Worm inches past, blindly eating his way forward. You try to settle into shadow, but you ache for the light. Time passes. The earth cracks. Your thirst claws. Your pretty, silken skirt of roots lies limp. You send what you can to your shoot, but it isn’t enough. If you had tears you would weep. Beetle is too free. She munches near your roots, stomping, oblivious, on their fragile tips. You drift into memories of golden light and gentle rain, the sound of wind and cicadas. But you no longer believe in your vision. Bitterness wracks your desiccated body. Your striving dries up, like the earth that has entombed you.

Then, a great rumbling convulses you. You’ve felt it before, one raging night of violent light before you came to this. But no—that was just a dream. The earth booms again. The shock reverberates through your delicate spine. One more and you’ll be shattered. Pieces for Beetle to munch. But then you feel something. A drop of water slides down your shoot and lands on your withered roots. Then another. And another. Soon mud oozes around your roots, and you drink, drink, drink, until you are sated. Life wells up inside you!

But the mud begins to surge. Water rushes through Mole’s tunnel, heaving up your roots. You try to hold on but you flounder. Beetle scurries for shelter beneath your skirt. You heave and sway, then the mud gives way, and she spins away on her back. You extend a tendril, but she cannot take hold. Her tiny legs claw above her, as she slips away into Mole’s tunnel. The current pulls but you resist, though only a moment ago you were resigned to die. Worm thrashes toward you in desperate course. You lean into the deluge. Make a bridge with your body. He inches over you and continues upward. The water whirls. Your tender shoot flails in the torrent. Then everything grows still and soundless, and you lie listless in the mud.

Slowly, the water recedes. Beetle lies motionless on her back. You hope Worm has made it out. You try again to accept your lot, but something tugs at you from above. Primordial possibilities tingle. The force of it snaps you aright. Emboldened, you bore deeper with your roots, then reach and stretch to a point beyond bearing, until at last, summoned by a star, you break through to the surface, and the brilliance of the sunlit field is once again yours.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. “Summoned by a Star” is written in the second person (“You sway in the breeze” as opposed to “I sway in the breeze,” or “A flower sways in the breeze.”) What effect does reading a story about “you” instead of “a flower” have on your experience of reading?

2. How does the seedling in this story feel while it is underground? Why does it feel this way?

3. Why do you think the plant in the story knows it is not meant for “everlasting night”? How does this compare to your own mindset when dealing with difficult times in your life?

4. Why do you think the author chose to set most of “Summoned by a Star” underground?

5. What attitude does the seedling have towards the beetle and worm as they pass by? Why do you think the author chose these interactions instead of, say, having the plant interact with a gardener? Do the seedling’s attempts to help the beetle and worm drain its energy or contribute to its eventual breakthrough?

6. The author says that the seedling is “summoned by a star” as opposed to saying that it tries to find sunshine. What might the idea of being “summoned” to something as opposed to simply trying to find something on your own suggest about how a person might make it through a difficult time?

7. What aspects of the story seem liminal to you? (Consider setting, characters, and action.) Is there a liminal guide, and if so, what is the nature of their interaction with other characters?