69 pages • 2 hours read
Walter Dean MyersHoops
Fiction | Book | Middle Grade | Published in 1981A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
The Role of Father Figures for Young Men
Fathers and father figures are a critical theme in Hoops. The novel opens on Lonnie reflecting on his father’s absence; he is both confused and sad but doesn’t know how to move forward. Much of how Lonnie processes his emotions is through basketball. Rather than acknowledging or working through his thoughts he allows them to be on pause until he figures them out. Thus, Cal’s entrance into Lonnie’s life is especially important: Cal becomes the father figure that Lonnie was missing.
As a young Black man growing up in New York, Lonnie is repeatedly put in situations where he needs guidance. The “edge” (2) in his relationship with his father causes him pain that he tries to push down. This traumatic loss impacts some of the ways that Lonnie reacts to other relationships: When he feels emotional tension, he either attempts to ignore it or resolve his feelings through violence. Later in the novel, when Lonnie witnesses Cal refusing to mend his own relationship with his father, Lonnie reflects: “What was bugging Cal was not that his father had done him wrong, but that his father had done wrong to a kid that had later become Cal, and the man couldn’t forgive his father for what he had done to that kid” (152). Lonnie identifies with Cal in this moment. For Lonnie, his father’s wrongdoing isn’t the issue; it’s that as an almost adult person, Lonnie doesn’t know how to “forgive his father” just as Cal can’t forgive his.
Overall, Myer’s choice to include these father-son relationships sends a strong message about the importance of healthy masculine role models for young Black men. Even though Cal has his own flaws, it is Lonnie’s relationship with the older Black man that allows Lonnie to develop his confidence, build stronger relationships with the women in his life, and begin healing the wound that Lonnie’s father left.
Black Identity and Performativity for White Audiences
Throughout Hoops, Lonnie reflects on how he views his own Blackness and how he’d like that to be perceived by the white people he encounters. This is a tension that is difficult for Lonnie to resolve; although Myers does not offer a solution or conclusion, readers can view Lonnie’s internal struggle and reflect on their own position on the matter.
Early in the novel, Lonnie introduces his resistance to performing his Black identity for a White audience. He describes his disgust with “that whole show-your-teeth, shuck and jive scene before” (21), and doesn’t want to participate. Lonnie’s resistance to performing as a caricature of Black masculinity stays with him throughout the novel as he becomes more successful in the basketball tournament. He has one profound dream where he is playing for a crowd of white scouts; towards the end of the dream, he describes the court: “[T]here were people without faces, just black arms and black legs and the brown ball” (96). The collapsing of the Black players with the brown ball as objects in the dream emphasizes Lonnie’s feeling that his performance on the basketball court reduces his identity and limits his potential.
Moreover, there is a sinister undercurrent whenever white people become involved with various basketball-related activities in the book. For example, Cal repeatedly advises Lonnie and other players to be skeptical of white scouts, who make promises of fame and riches that are rarely fulfilled. As a wealthy white basketball sponsor, Mr. O’Donnel comes to embody the extent to which white people seek to control a game predominantly defined by Black players and coaches. Finally, troubling racial dynamics emerge when Lonnie’s team plays a majority-white opponent, toward whom the white referees show clear favoritism in calling fouls.
Vulnerability and Masculinity
A vitally important theme in Hoops is the development of a healthier masculinity. Lonnie has many ideas about what it means to be a man, and so do all of the men around him. This means that Lonnie, at 17-years-old, constantly renegotiates the boundaries of masculinity. Over the course of the novel, Lonnie is slowly able to include vulnerability in his vision of being a man.
Much of the beginning of the novel shows Lonnie seeing masculinity in binary terms: Either he is or is not a man. He interprets statements like “show up if you’re man enough” (23) as direct challenges to his personhood. The only reason Cal is able to win Lonnie over is by playing against Lonnie in “a manhood thing” (40). When Cal proves himself on the court, Lonnie begrudgingly accepts Cal as more of a man. Yet Lonnie also wrestles with having deep emotions and not knowing how to express these. His feelings of sadness at his father leaving are reserved for private moments; he cries himself to sleep on his own, even though he has friends and a girlfriend who would listen if he let them.
Eventually, Lonnie begins embracing more nuance about his masculinity. This process is shown in his interactions with Mary-Ann, as he becomes comfortable enough to express a fraction of his romantic feelings towards her. Similarly, Lonnie begins to see and empathize with the emotions of the people around him more easily; when Ox’s bird dies and Ox is in tears, Lonnie thinks, “[H]is mouth was open as if there were things to say he just couldn’t get out” (116). This is a critical turning point for Lonnie: Ox is a strong, big man experiencing a huge flood of public emotions over the death of a small, fragile thing. This jars Lonnie’s understanding of masculinity and helps him develop his ability to be in touch with his own emotions and vulnerability.
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