YAQUI DELGADO WANTS TO KICK YOUR ASS by Meg Medina ~ Culture 3

YAQUI DELGADO WANTS TO KICK YOUR ASS by Meg Medina

Author: Meg Medina

Title:  Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass

Publisher:  Candlewick Press

Publication Date: 2013

ISBN:  9780763658595

Plot Summary

A girl tells Piddy Sanchez that Yaqui Delgado hates her and wants to kick her ass. Piddy doesn't even know who Yaqui is, never mind what she's done to piss her off. At first Piddy is more concerned with trying to find out more about the father she's never met and how to balance honors courses with her weekend job at the neighborhood hair salon. But as the harassment escalates, avoiding Yaqui and her gang starts to take over Piddy's life.

Critical Analysis

Okay, I admit it: I totally chose this book for review based on the title. I really, really, really wanted to know what had upset Yaqui Delgado so much that she would threaten someone. Once in high school a girl threated to kick my ass because her parents were going through a divorce and my dad was her mom’s attorney. One word from me to my dad went from my dad to her mom -- and that was the end of that. The irony is years later when this same girl needed a divorce attorney herself, she hired my dad!

The reader hears very little from Yaqui Delgado. The reader must infer that Yaqui comes from a troubled home in a troubled area of town. She bullies because she feels that is what she must do to survive in her reality. Instead, the reader feels all emotions from the first-person perspective of Piddy, the focus of Yaqui’s hate. Piddy is a good Latina girl, helping her mother, making good grades, and working to help make ends meet. A move to a different apartment sends Piddy to another high school. She falls in with the geek/nerd click after she is rejected by the girls in the “Latin Zone” click because her curves drew the attention of the boys and Latina girls: “I’ve only had an ass for about six months, and now it seems it has a mind of its own.” … “Maybe she’s watching me right now, staring at my swishy ass, hating me. I hold my books tight and press forward in the crowd, keeping my hips as still as I can.” Piddy tries to diffuse the situation and does not intentionally attract attention to her body.

In addition to many references about Latina body shapes, other Hispanic cultural markers include the repeated inclusion of Spanish terms and forms of address (“Lila throws back her head and laughs. ‘¡No me digas! A dropout in the tenth grade! Qué lindo. And what are you going to do for a living?” … “Look at your poor mami.”), religious practices (“Ma lights a jar candle we keep on the piano instead. It’s our Dollar Store Virgen de la Caridad.”), and musical preferences (“Instantly half the room is singing along to ‘Rata de Dos Patas.’ It’s a hit in Spanish, but I have to wonder how it would do in English.”).

Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass is a worthy winner of the 2014 Pure Belpré Award for its depiction of Latinas. The book has everything from the hard-working mother who provides, the honorary aunties in the ladies at the beauty parlor, the high school girls who want to make good grades to go to college, to the high school troublemakers who toe the line with the authorities.

Reviews

• Booklist (2013): “Medina authentically portrays the emotional rigors of bullying through Piddy’s growing sense of claustrophobic dread, and even with no shortage of loving, supportive adults on her side, there’s no easy solution. With issues of ethnic identity, class conflict, body image, and domestic violence, this could have been an overstuffed problem novel; instead, it transcends with heartfelt, truthful writing that treats the complicated roots of bullying with respect.”
• Children’s Literature (2013): “This is one of the most powerful stories about bullying out there. Medina effectively captures the emotions and fears of the victims of bullying. Make sure to have a box of tissues at hand!”

Awards

• 2013 Cybils Awards winner, young adult and fiction
• 2014 Pura Belpré Award winner, author
• 2014 International Latino Book Award 1^st place, best young adult fiction (English)

Connections

• Have students write a compare/contrast paper against another Pure Belpré Award-winning book. You can find a list of past winners and honors at http://www.ala.org/alsc/awardsgrants/bookmedia/belpremedal/belprepast
• Learn more about author Meg Medina at her website: https://megmedina.com/
• Have students create a word search with the Spanish words in the book.

Bibliography

Cover, Mount Juliet, Tennessee. Personal photograph by Amy Wilson. October 1, 2017.

Medina, Meg. Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass. Sommerville, MA: Candlewick Press, 2013. ISBN 9780763658595