Bikes
The opening story “David” is all about bikes. At the center of the narrative is the serial recurrence of imagery of a boy named David speeding away from pursuers atop his bike. Combined with the rest of the story, bikes are situated as symbols of escape from oppression.
Mark Duggan
An angry crowd poised on the precipice of turning into a dangerous mob begins shouting in unison “We are all Mark Duggan” over and over again. The title character of “Harlem Jones” is fed up with it. They are not Mark Duggan because Mark Duggan is dead, shot to death at point blank range by a cop. Mark Duggan is the book’s symbolic equivalent of real-life victims on a list far too long to fit here.
Bananas
In the story titled “Hope” Mr. Lucas plants bananas trees with the purpose in mind of investing for his daughter’s future. Thus, bananas become the literal incarnation of the symbolic meaning of the story’s title.
The Principal
“Jailhouse James” is the nickname the students have their principal in the story “Shu Yi.” The title character is the newest arrival at the school and as a result of conditioned familial racism and peer pressure she is being bullied mercilessly. The narrator is pretty much the only other minority in the school and her mother takes exception to the state of things and pays a little visit to Mr. James to set things right. When he fails to take the proper action, the narrative inexorably moves toward that moment when the only black kid in class submits the pressure of white racism. James becomes in this story the symbol of how systemic racism is predicated on the failure to do nothing by those with the power to do something.
“Gaps in the Hickory”
This is a story all about how nature sometimes does not take the course that it is expected of it. It is not nature’s fault that these hiccups in the expected course of things happen. In fact, they are not really even hiccups at all since by definition anything that occurs naturally without external influence is itself an example of the natural occurrence of things. The fault lies in those signifying something unexpected as unnatural. The symbolism of the title refers to these hiccups that occasionally penetrate through the thick natural protective force of compliant acceptance of what is and is not to be considered “natural.”
