Black Hair Images

Three Images in “Black Hair” The poem, “Black Hair”, by Gary Soto describes a story of an eight-year-old boy imagining that one day he could be like his hero, baseball player Hector Moreno. Each image in this poem gives the reader an opportunity to visualize the narrator’s childhood. Three images in particular, “The game before us was more than baseball. It was –Hector Moreno quick and hard with turned muscles”, “and mother was the terror of mouths twisting hurt with butter knives”, and "when Hector lined balls into deep center, in my mind I rounded the bases". These images show that baseball was very important at this time in the young boy’s life and it gave him hope.
The first image, "The game before us was more than baseball. It was --Hector Moreno quick and hard with turned muscles” shows that the boy had hoped to be like Hector Moreno. In the hot month of July he sits in the bleachers at a park to cheer for the local baseball teams. He likes baseball, but he also likes to watch his hero. In Hector Moreno, the eight year old shy narrator has found a glimmer of hope in a time when it is difficult to be Mexican. Hector gave him confidence in himself. Hector was not only Mexican but he could also play baseball. The fact that the narrator even thinks to compare himself to his local hero shows that he thinks that one day he could be Hector. Baseball gave the narrator an escape from reality and a chance to imagine he could be like someone else; Hector Moreno. The second image, "and mother was the terror of mouths twisting hurt with butter knives" shows that the boy has an abusive mother but in baseball he finds an escape. Baseball gives the narrator and escape from the reality of the death of his father who he remembers vividly "hanging over the table or our sleep" and an escape from an abusive mother who "was the terror of mouths." It provides the young boy hope that one day he could be the one running the bases. He replaced that emptiness with the love of