Skin so dark it is blue
In the first story, the narrator describes her friend Lucy and mentions how she has really dark skin. To make the reader understand just how dark Lucy’s skin is, she tells the reader that Lucy’s skin is so dark that it is almost blue. The comparison and the description of Lucy’s skin makes the reader understand that maybe the narrator is not so accustomed to seeing black people or that she is not fully capable of understanding the race differences yet.
Metaphor for danger
In the story "One Holy Night," a man named Baby Boy shows a much younger girl his collection of guns and pleads with her to understand what he is. The girl refuses to acknowledge it and remains stuck in her fantasy of a perfect man and perfect world. The guns are used here however as a metaphor for danger and to suggest the dangers a person has to experience in adulthood.
What is love
At the end of the story "One Holy Night," Ixchel talks with her friends about love and what love is. The three girls all have a different opinion about love and describe it in different manners. One of the girls for example, compares love with the act of waiting at the foot of the stairs while someone drops a piano from above. The comparison has the purpose of making the reader understand that in some cases, love can be dangerous and it can even end up harming the people who fall in love.
Dancing with death
In the story "Remember the Alamo," the main character describes how he dances with death and how he enjoys doing it. The act of dancing with death is used here as a metaphor to make reference to the dangers of being gay and how it can influence a person’s life. On some level, Rudy, the main character, was dancing with death by having a dangerous lifestyle that put his life in danger. He was constantly putting himself in danger when he was behaving in an uncontrolled way and in this sense he was dancing with death.
Waiting like a spider
In the story "Never marry a Mexican," the main character, a woman named Clemencia talks about a man named Drew with whom she was sleeping with. Drew was a married man and had a child with his wife. Clemencia reused to move in with Drew and chose instead to wait patiently as a spider for the right time to act. The comparison has the purpose here of highlighting just how dangerous and cunning Clemencia was and how far she was willing to go to get what she wanted.
