Analysis Of The Change By Tony Hoagland

Personally, I believe that Tony Hoagland’s poem “The Change” is not racially complex, but just flat out racist. For him to ‘create’ a persona that has views that we see throughout the poem, seems like you would have to dig so deep within yourself to even be able to write something like this. I feel that by him saying that he had created a persona for this poem, is him trying to hide behind an excuse once he saw the responses that the poem elicited. The reason I feel that the poem is racist is because of the language he uses and the pictures he creates. The line “Some tough little European blonde pitted against that big black girl from Alabama” creates this image in our minds that this black tennis player is this huge woman that the small white European player needs to be protected from. As Hoagland continues, “Cornrowed hair and Zulu bangles on her arms, some outrageous name ike Vondella Aphrodite” just shows that he continues to paint this picture of the black player as something we need to oggle at. By using some a ridiculous name as “Vondella Aphrodite” and mentioning what she is wearing and how her hair looks, shows he has no respect for her culture, but that he doesn’t even have respect for her as a human being. He goes on to say “And you loved her complicated hair...I couldn’t

Toward