Mexican WhiteBoy
By: Matt de la Peña / Narrated By: Henry Leyva
Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins
Passionate without being all “Fraught-with-Angst”
Oh what a relief! Finally! A book for Teens that is heavy on action and emotion but is light on melodrama. Mexican WhiteBoy will make you remember what it was like being that age, so it’s good for you/your parents, plus it has some serious topics that make it totally great for you/your kids.
Danny Lopez has an American mom, a Mexican dad. Well, Dad is out of the picture, back in Mexico after something happened; Danny’s pretty sure it’s because he, Danny, is more White than Mexican. I mean, what kind of good Mexican can’t speak Spanish? And after Mom gets all lovey-dovey with her new boyfriend, Danny chooses to spend the summer with his Dad’s family in National City.
The thing is, when Danny’s with his Mom in San Diego, he’s a dark-skinned Mexican kid amongst all the rich White kids at his private school. But when he’s with his Dad’s family in National City? Oh, how he feels he does NOT belong. Plus, there are heavy duty things going on in his life which have made him withdraw into himself. This is very much at odds with Dad’s boisterous, semi-profane family. Luckily, his cousin Soph seems to like him, even though he’s a smart kid who sticks out like a sore thumb, and she takes him to the one place he kinda sorta feels he does belong: The park, where a sort of baseball game is played.
The one thing Danny can do is play ball, just like his Dad has always coached him to play. He knocks several tennis balls outta the park, and after his one experience with getting wasted, he shows himself to be an even better pitcher: Fast balls at 80+ miles per hour. But he can’t control it cuz he’s a bit of a head case. His mind just takes over, and his game gets away from him.
But this summer at National City he’ll find true friendship with his cousin and her friends, and an unexpected and awesome friendship with Uno, the half Black, half Mexican dude who beat the living daylights out of Danny at their first meeting. He’ll also, be still his beating heart, find himself all pins and needles around a girl named, Liberty. And she doesn’t speak a word of English, so what’s he gonna do?
What I really liked about the book was that friendship with Uno. Both boys/young men don’t know where they fit in, are really looking for a safe place to belong. They wind up opening up with each other, and the insults and shared insights they have flow fast and furious. This is a fun and funny book.
Plus it has some fantastic sportswriting, which I do so love. Consider: I haaate baseball, but I found myself all tense and rigid while Uno and Danny run a sort of con, trying to make money. Will Danny continue to psych himself out, or will he find a place for himself, a really good future that he’s not ashamed to claim?
While the adults are sometimes depicted as fools and neglectful (As they often are in Teen books), for the most part here, you just don’t know where they’re coming from. They’re well fleshed-out, have enough depth that you’re unsure as to their motives. They’re deep and conflicted beings. Not to mention incredibly flawed beings who sometimes make mistakes, and sometimes even own up to those mistakes.
Henry Leyva knocks this outta the park, TOTAL pun intended, as he captures that ol’ jeering, insulting attitude that most teenagers seem to find pleasing in each other. His characterizations are pretty spot-on, and I appreciated that he seemed to know he can’t do a girl’s voice to save his life, so he didn’t really even try: The girls have lighter voices, but one judges them by the words they say rather than the tone in which they say them. And to say he nailed the tough but vulnerable Uno and the scared but longing and hopeful Danny is an understatement.
I’m very sorry Hispanic Heritage Month isn’t, say, a Couple of Months or So, as I’d dearly love to give more of Matt de la Peña’s books a try. Seriously, Mexican WhiteBoy is that good, that true a book, with added depth, great action, and a good use of irony and figurative language. Which makes it a treat for a “grown-up” looking to feel something, looking to learn something new, or seeking to look at something old with an entirely new set of eyes.
While listening to the book, I felt a bit of my own experience in play. When I was in high school, we were bused, and I wound up being one of a tiny few Mexican American girls in a little sorority. But when I was in Juárez with my extended family? They lovingly called me “Gringita” as I couldn’t then (And much to my shame, even now) speak a word of Spanish. I remember that sense of feeling a certain sort of shame on both sides, but like Danny, I was surrounded by good intentions and true affection.
That said, however, I gotta tell ya: My fastball? Oh, how lame it is!
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