What is an example of symbolism in the memoir, All Boys Aren’t Blue: A Memoir-Manifesto?

Early in the book, the author describes how, as a result of a fight with other children when he was young, he had his teeth knocked out and had to have them replaced. This led him, he says, to feeling self-conscious about his smile for a very long time, only becoming comfortable again with smiling as an adult. In that context, the author's teeth can be seen as representing a certain sense of identity that he lost when very young, and struggled for what seems to have been decades to reclaim.