Mexican White Boy by Matt De La Pena Book Review
Written by Matt de la Pena
Published by Ember in 2010
ISBN: 978-0440239383
Plot Summary: Danny Lopez is a high school student who has come to spend the summer with his father's family while his mother and sister are back home in San Francisco with her boyfriend. Danny immediately doesn't fit into the community as he comes from an elite private school where he plays select baseball and the area is mostly lower income and hispanic. He struggles with his mixed heritage of being half white and half Mexican even though his father's family welcomes him with open arms. He sees his privilege as an obstacle that keeps him from being truly accepted into the family as well as the fact that they speak primarily in Spanish which he doesn't understand fully. Danny meets a girl named Liberty who is also half Mexican but she doesn't speak English very well so it makes it hard for them to communicate.
Danny goes about creating narrative in his head that his dad left to move to Mexico to get away from all the white people and from his half white son. Danny believes that his father will come back as soon as he accepts full the Mexican part of himself and he becomes a great baseball pitcher. Because of all the emotional turmoil, Danny struggles with any situation that has pressure including pitching on the baseball field. With the help of an enemy turned friend named Uno, Danny is able to focus on baseball and become excellent at it. He eventually learns that his dad has been watching over him and he realizes that he doesn't need to make his father happy or become just like him and his family after seeing his Uncle Ray commit a violent murder. Danny realizes that self acceptance is the best way forward and that he can be content just being himself.
Critical Analysis (Including Cultural Markers): Danny's sense of abandonment and not feeling like he fits in is a theme that any reader can identify with as those are the main themes and motifs throughout the story. It is very discombobulating trying to fit into a group of people that you don't share full ancestry with and is even harder when you don't speak the language. Pena tells a great coming of age story that is fully marked by the fact that Danny can't define who he is and where he belongs in the world. Uno brings about the antagonist of the story and his upbringing is very different as he lives in the barrios but just like Danny he is also biracial which is something that helps them bond together over time. Knowing that both Liberty and Uno are also bi-racial helps Danny realize that many people also struggle with their place in the world.
Violence is a major underlying plot point that drives this story. With Danny's father in jail for assault, it drives Danny to create the narrative that his father must not like him until he becomes more like him. Violence and intimidation is also seen with Uncle Ray as well as Danny scratching and pulling on him skin with tweezers when he feels intense emotional pain. The depiction of the barrios and all the pain that those areas bring is done in a manner that is not exalting the lifestyle of those neighborhoods but it brings a poignant reminder that this is the way that many people live and that it is very hard for people to escape those situations when education and making yourself better is not preached and taught to kids.
Review: Kirkus Review
Angry with his Caucasian mother and feeling removed from his Hispanic heritage, 16-year-old Danny decides to spend the summer with his father’s relatives in an attempt to re-forge his identity. It’s a busy summer—he’s both running a pitching scam with Uno, a disillusioned interracial teenager, and falling in love with Liberty, a recently arrived immigrant. Danny’s sophomoric plan to find his missing dad reflects a balance between idealism and stupidity, especially since astute readers will quickly deduce the whereabouts of his father. While Danny’s self-inflicted wounds are physical manifestations of his identity crisis, de la Peña depends too heavily on the absent-parent motif for emotional justification. Danny’s internal voice occasionally grates, but the earnest emotions portrayed in his imagined letters to his father easily correct for this. Boisterous adult characters serve as outstanding foils for Danny and his friends, especially Senior, Uno’s domineering father, who is given to rodomontade. Though not an out-of-the-park follow-up to 2005’s Ball Don’t Lie, de la Peña blends sports and street together in a satisfying search for personal identity. (Fiction. YA)
Connection: Students can learn more about how baseball is a way for kids to get out of tough circumstances and situations through the MLB's partnership with Latino American and Hispanic communities through this website:
More books by Matt de la Pena
Last Stop on Market Street ISBN: 978-0399257742
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