Cultural Alloy
The cultural alloy symbolizes Gunnar who feels himself to be a mixture of black and white people. While sitting among the black people in the West hill, he realized that he was not like those black children who were living there. They were shouting and roaring but Gunnar was quiet unlike the black people in the room. He says, "In the middle of this unadulterated realness I realized I was a cultural alloy, tin-hearted whiteness wrapped in blackened copper plating.” He has metaphorically described himself as plated by both blackness and whiteness because of his manners.
Hillside
Hillside symbolizes the residential area of black community. After moving from Saint Monica to the West of Los Angeles, Gunnar comes to Hillside where he meets a lot black people. He has described the place in terms of a "boiling cauldron" and he says, “For a while living in Hillside was like living in the Old West in a thriving goldmining town’s bubble economy.” Most of the African American literature includes places like the hillside in the book to demonstrate a particular area of black people where they live and from where their movements start.
Psycho Loco
Psycho Loco has been used as a symbol for all the African American rogues who have become the reason of discriminatory attitude towards African Americans. According to the author, such people have deteriorated the position and image of Afro-Americans. Psycho Loco was involved in robbery and he used to assist others in robbing from stores. He was also a murderer and he used to kill people for achieving his motives. Gunnar also takes his help in robberies and it was because of him that Gunnar went on a wrong side of life. "Selling Cracks in El-barrio" is another example which has highlighted the criminal activities of blacks in America. It is because of people like Pshyco Loco that the blacks are considered as criminals.
Prejudice Against African Americans
The most recurrent motif in the book is the prejudice against African Americans. While residing in America, Gunnar got to know about the discrimination of blacks and the brutal treatment that they encounter. In the Saint Monica, the blacks were described as “Black was an unwanted dog abandoned in the forest who finds its way home by fording flooded rivers and hitchhiking in the beds of pickup trucks and arrives at its destination only to be taken for a car ride to the desert.”
However, the perception of people in Hillside about black people was different. After living for years in America, Gunnar witnessed the persecution of blacks and he raised his voice through his writings. He says, “It’s been a lovely five hundred years, but it’s time to go. We’re abandoning this sinking ship America, lightening its load by tossing our histories overboard, jettisoning the present, and drydocking our future. Black America has relinquished its needs in a world where expectations are illusion, has refused to develop ideals and mores in a society that applies principles without principle.”
At another instance, Gunnar describes himself as a person who follows the unwritten laws of America which states that black people cannot sit together.
Transformation
Another motif in the book is transformation. The memoir is evocative of Gunnar's transformation in life. He was an African American who faced the prejudice during his stay in Saint Monica. He encountered bullying by his class fellows and he realized that there were different rules for blacks. The prejudice against blacks and the company of criminals compelled him to choose the wrong path in his life. He used to love playing basketball and he was a writer as well but he embarked on a journey which led him to a dark hole. Despite of all the wrongs which he did, eventually he mend his ways and he became a famous basketball player and he used this fame as a writer to propagate the issues of African Americans and he became an ideal for his community. By writing his life story, he tried to promulgate a lesson that a person can be transformed at any stage of his life.
