Dave Schaafsma's Reviews > Mexican WhiteBoy

Mexican Whiteboy is a YA text written by Matt De la Peña, and I really liked this book a lot (and my friend Jenn suggested over my shoulder that I add, for veracity’s sake, that he is, based on his picture, “cute,” which okay, he is, done). De la Peña is the author of picture book Last Stop on Market Street, that was winner of the 2016 Newbery Medal, a 2016 Caldecott Honor Book, and a 2016 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Book (Christian Robinson), so he knows his way around words. I heard De la Peña give a talk at the National Council of Teachers of English a couple years ago, and he was totally charming, telling his working class story of his Dad, but I didn’t read this book until now, two years later, which is supposed to be his best book.

I read it on the advice of a couple people when I asked them to recommend sports and romance YA for my fall YA course, which I never ever read. I love sports, but I usually am disappointed with sports novels. But I really thought the baseball writing in this one was the best thing about it. And now have read three books that feature sports, two on basketball, Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, and Reynolds’s All-American Boys, where I found the sports writing also worked.

I loved the story of the reticent Danny, baseball pitcher, and who becomes his best bud, Uno, his cool cousin Sofia, and his wannabe girl, Liberty. And both Danny’s and Uno’s fathers. This is basically a father-son book, and I am reading a lot of those, so was glad about that. The book has great realistic dialogue of a lower-class California city close to San Diego, National City, where Danny, who is a half-Mexican/half-White 16 year old, spends the summer with his uncle’s family in order to be “more Mexican” instead of the private school where he is an outsider. But he only speaks English, he isn’t as poor as the people in this town. And the sweet Liberty, who mainly speaks Spanish, who wants to be “more American,” whom Danny crushes on (how do we know, throughout the book? Every time he sees her, he gets a “knot” in his chest, which I do find sweet; the books opens with Sophia and her friends crudely talking about sex, which I also loved, but I was sort of relieved this whole crush basically just led to [spoiler alert!] only [heaven forfend!] kissing!).

I love the way things don’t happen in the storytelling: We don’t know where Danny’s Dad is or why, and almost nothing happens (in typical YA romantic fashion) between the shy Danny and Liberty for The Whole Frigging Book, which, since I obviously kept turning the pages, totally worked for me.

There’s a hawk theme he should have cut; there’s a “it’s not your fault, Danny” scene that he could have cut, but the baseball sequences are terrific, the violence and talk feel real, the father-son stuff seems real (i.e., De la Peña uses Uno’s dad to create political statements about racist capitalist white America that I liked quite a bit and I like Danny's lying letter to his Dad). Oh, all of our fave characters get an upswing in the end, ala much YA, but whatever, I was in tears, so it worked for me. The last fifty pages moved a 3.5 book to a 4.0+ or so, for sure. Really fine YA novel!!!