Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass Author: Visit Amazon's Meg Medina Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0763658596 | Format: EPUB
Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass Description
From School Library Journal
Gr 8 Up-Piddy Sanchez seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her best friend moves away and Piddy's Mom literally has the floor pulled out from under her as the small staircase in their apartment building collapses, forcing the family to move to another part of Queens. The move does have a bonus. For the first time, Piddy will have her own room, but it comes at a price-she has to start at a new school. Her developing body is starting to attract some unwanted attention from the Latino boys in the school as well as from Yaqui Delgado. Yaqui feels that the teenager is shaking her booty and doesn't consider her a fellow Latina. Piddy's skin is too light, she doesn't have an accent, and she does well in school. The bullying escalates and Yaqui and her crew seem to have it in for Piddy and her blossoming bottom. The teenager also faces some internal struggles as she searches for information on a father she has never known or even seen. Roxanne Hernandez, a fluent Spanish speaker, pronounces the occasional Spanish words nicely and provides a great voice and tone for each character. The Latin music at the beginning and ending of each CD (Piddy is half Cuban and half Dominican) adds a cultural element. With a title that is sure to draw attention and Medina's great story (Candlewick, 2013) to back it up, this is a definite purchase.-Katie Llera, Bound Brook High School, NJα(c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
--This text refers to the
Audio CD
edition.
From Booklist
When Piedad “Piddy” Sanchez hears that Yaqui Delgado is going to crush her, she has no idea why she has become a target of one of the roughest girls in her new Queens school. But Yaqui tells everyone Piddy is a skank who shakes her ass when she walks, and as the bullying escalates from threats to physical attacks, Piddy finds herself living in constant fear. A strong student with a bright future at her old school, Piddy starts skipping school, and her grades nosedive. After a truly upsetting attack on Piddy is uploaded to YouTube, she realizes this isn’t a problem she can solve on her own. 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. Grades 8-11. --Krista Hutley
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- Hardcover: 272 pages
- Publisher: Candlewick; First Edition, First Printing edition (March 26, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0763658596
- ISBN-13: 978-0763658595
- Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
This excellent novel features Piddy Sanchez, a Latina girl who starts high school in a different area thanks to her single mother's determination to get her into a good school. Sadly, Piddy unwittingly incurs the wrath of Yaqui Delgado, a fierce bully. Yaqui sends her emissary Vanesa to warn Piddy of her impending a** kicking. Yaqui sadly believes that Piddy struts her stuff and is "not Latina enough," and is on the make for Yaqui's boyfriend. This is later disproved as Piddy doesn't even know Yaqui or her boyfriend and would not recognize him if he walked right in front of her.
This is a very serious topic. Racial pride is one thing. Race is a matter of inherited bloodlines. Race is not about acting or talking a certain way or playing the part of a stereotype. Race is something a person is born into and is not acquired. How a person talks and acts is secondary. Sadly, there are many people who believe in inflicting racial stereotypical expectations and behaviors on members of their race. There is also the gross misperception that a person is not "(fill in the racial blank) enough" because they for whatever reason do not conform to the stereotype. What makes me personally angry is when others impose a dictum of behaviors on people simply because they belong to a certain group. Not everybody is willing to go along with these stereotypes.
Another problem that rears its ugly head is the Jim Crow mentality. (Jim Crow is generally associated with the black population, but any laws discriminating against certain groups or group members who treat other members of their group badly based on race fall under the Jim Crow umbrella.) There is no such thing as "not black/Asian/Native/Latino/Latina/any group you can think of enough.
Talk about a provocative title! YAQUI DELGADO WANTS TO KICK YOUR ASS grabs teen readers' attention in a hurry. As you might infer, it is a book about bullying -- not "another" book about bullying, but "a" book about it. Meaning? I think it stands above the others I've read. Strong, strong characterization. And, in a book curiously devoid of male characters (spare two minor players), Medina's book speaks to the power of women, especially when they work together.
The protagonist here is Piddy Sanchez, a Latina girl who lands in a new high school when her single mother tries to improve their living quarters. Piddy's arrival draws notice from the wrong person in a hurry. In fact, the first line of the book is the title of the book. The words come from Vanesa, a friend of Yaqui's. It takes another girl to explain the threat more clearly. The mysterious (but not for long!) Yaqui has decided that Piddy is stuck up, shakes her booty too much, and has eyes for her boyfriend. Of course, Piddy wouldn't know Yaqui's boyfriend if she fell over him, but that, apparently, is beside the point.
From this simple beginning, a psychological net begins to close on the mind of Piddy. She begins to feel like prey, an innocent creature that can hear but not see the trouble that stalks her. Later, Yaqui appears with a bang (think Piddy's head, maybe), and the intimidation takes on a whole new dimension. Piddy is so traumatized that she fears going outside, never mind to school. She becomes the hunted, the haunted, and the hated through no fault of her own.
As a bigger than life help to Piddy, there's Ma's best friend, Lila, who sells Avon products and keeps men guessing. Piddy's mother has personality in spades, too.
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