Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass by Meg Medina

With a few days left in May, I decided to squeeze one more Popsugar Challenge book into the month. Looking over what categories were left, I decided to tackle the "book where the main character is a different ethnicity than you" prompt. I've had Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass by Meg Medina sitting on my shelf for years now, so I decided to give this young adult novel featuring a Latina protagonist a try.

The novels focuses on high school sophomore Piddy Sanchez. She lives with her mother in Queens, New York. Her father isn't a part of her life, and although she asks her mother about him from time to time, she's never gotten many details aside from the fact that he was from the Dominican Republic and that he ran off before she was born. When the stairs in their apartment building collapse under her mother's feet one day, she decides to move with Piddy to a nicer place. While they don't go far, the move means that Piddy has to change schools, and that's when the trouble starts.

Her new high school turns out to be a rather rough place, and Piddy has trouble making friends. She doesn't fit in with the other Spanish kids, since she has light skin, so she eventually aligns herself with the other school misfits. While she eventually has kids that she talks to during the day, nothing compares to the friends she left behind at her old apartment and school. After a few weeks have passed, someone gives Piddy an alarming message - she's somehow managed to catch the attention of another student named Yaqui Delgado, and Yaqui wants to kick her ass.

At first, Piddy is confused. She doesn't share any classes with Yaqui. She has never spoken to her. She doesn't even know what she looks like. She learns soon enough, however, as Yaqui and her friends start bullying her in the hallways. Anxious and scared, Piddy, who has always been a top student, stops doing her schoolwork and even starts cutting class in an effort to turn herself invisible and escape Yaqui's attention. Nothing she does works however, and Yaqui ends up jumping her after school one evening. Even worse, the whole thing was recorded on someone's phone and the attack is posted online. Scared and humiliated, Yaqui is now at a crossroads. Should she try to continue on and hide what happened as best as she can, or should she reach out to her mother and her school for help?

Yaqui Delgado won the Pura Belpré Author Award, which is given to authors that celebrate the Latino experience in literature. This novel certainly did that, with Piddy's mother and aunt especially providing lots of cultural references throughout the story. Latin music, food, and language are infused into the plot in a way that feels authentic. At the same time, this novel is still relatable to readers of any ethnicity that pick it up. It's about a kid dealing with a bully, and that, unfortunately, is something that many different kinds of students struggle with in real life. I appreciated that this was a novel starring Latin characters that wasn't necessarily about being Latin. We need more diversity in young adult literature, and books like this are a step in the right direction.

I did enjoy the novel overall, but a few things about it irked me. Mainly, the plot felt unfocused. The conflict between Piddy and Yaqui felt very manufactured, especially since there was never a real reason given for all the harassment. It is mentioned once that Yaqui's boyfriend may have catcalled in Piddy's direction one time and that Yaqui doesn't like the way Piddy "shakes her ass" when she walks. I found it hard to believe that Yaqui would go to the trouble to turn that into a crusade against a girl she didn't know at all and had no contact with throughout the school day. We are never shown Yaqui's perspective or given any background information on her either, leaving her a stereotypical bully character. The times where Yaqui actually messed with Piddy were few and far between too. There were stretches of the novel where it felt like not very much was happening. I wish there has been a stronger story in place to keep everything moving.

The conflict with Yaqui wasn't the only aspect of the story that felt a bit off. Piddy is on a halfhearted quest to find out more information about her father, which doesn't really go anywhere. Her mother ends up filling in some of the blanks for her, but she doesn't do anything with the information. She also has a brief romance with a boy from her old apartment building named Joey that feels rushed and underdeveloped. This was meant to be a novel about how Piddy grows and matures through her sophomore year, but everything is left so hazy that I wasn't able to get a clear picture of exactly how she has changed by the end of the story.

Without a strong plot to keep things interesting, what saved this novel from being boring for me was how realistic it felt. In real life, students are bullied, families aren't perfect, kids make mistakes, and things aren't always resolved neatly. That's how Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass feels. It's an honest look at the private dramas that students deal with every day. While I feel like there were some missed opportunities to flesh out Piddy's story a bit more, this novel is still a solid read, especially if you are interested in books with diverse characters.


Challenge Tally
Popsugar Challenge: (a book where the main character is a different ethnicity than you) 35/40
TBR Challenge: (previously owned) 31/60

Total Books Read in 2017: 40