111 pages • 3 hours read
Matt de la PeñaMexican WhiteBoy
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2008A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “Del Mar Fair”
Sofia and her girls are taking Danny to the Del Mar Fair. Self-conscious in a collared shirt and Vans, Danny digs his nails into his arm, vows to get new clothes. Uno is in the accompanying car drinking a Colt 45. Before the two cars pull away, Danny’s Uncle Ray drives up in his Bronco. He questions Danny about his injuries. Ray’s anger builds as he assesses how badly Danny’s been hurt. Ray then demands Uno get out of the other car. Ray proceeds to aggressively get in Uno’s face. In Ray, Danny sees his father’s “same crazed eyes” (61). All Danny has to do is tell his uncle it was Uno, and Ray will “handle it from there” (61). When pressed for an answer, though, Danny lies and says it happened in the game. Danny saves Uno from Ray’s wrath, though everyone, including Ray, knows how Danny was hurt. Uncle Ray tells Danny he did right and that a “couple stitches ain’t so bad if you got everybody’s respect” (62).
On the way to the fair, Danny takes his “first-ever sip of alcohol” (63). Once inside, he learns the name of the pretty light-skinned girl is Liberty. Flaca tells Sofia she’s heard about Liberty, that she’s “slinging booty in the Gaslamp” (65), San Diego’s red-light district. Sofia dismisses the information and mocks Flaca, but Danny just smiles because now he knows her name. The girls enter an art exhibit while Danny stays with the guys, who are drinking and debating whether or not the toddler is Liberty’s. They rejoin the boys, Sofia refreshes Danny’s drink, and they visit the livestock pavilion, where they feed baby goats and sheep and continue discussing Liberty. Danny learns she has just arrived in the U.S. from Rosarita, Mexico, and does not speak English. Moreover, Liberty’s father is white, lives in Los Angeles with his other family and had secured her entry into the U.S. He sends money, but she has no relationship with him.
Continuing to drink, Danny sits down and “feels the warmth of alcohol coating his insides”(69). He doesn’t notice how drunk he is, only that he feels good. While sitting on the ground, he composes a letter to his father in his head. In it, he describes each circumstance of his life as he wishes it was and as he imagines it would impress his father. The alcohol makes him “feel like smiling and talking to anybody and everybody, at any time—though he hasn’t”(71). He keeps drinking until he’s “drunk as hell” (73). He watches the guys, Raul, Lolo, Chico and Rene, “pimp” up to a pitching booth. He wants to join them but sits back down and passes out. He dreams the dream he’s been having since his dad left. In it, he sees three hawks living together as a family, the adults caring for and feeding the baby hawk. In the dream, he falls asleep, and when he wakes, the hawk family has gone; he is overcome by sadness, then awakens.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is”
At the pitching booth, the boys take turns clocking their speed. There is the usual one-upping, ribbing and betting. With each boy’s turn, the pitches get faster. By the time Uno steps up, several have pitched to mediocre results. Uno is excited to do something at which he excels. He knows he is good and “[n]othing hypes him up more than when people are watching him. Especially white people. In every other part of life, they run shit, just like his old man always says, but not when it comes to sports”(77).
His pitches are significantly faster than the other boys and a small crowd gathers. Lolo follows Uno and when his pitch clocks slower than he thinks it should, he accuses the booth of being rigged and demands his money back. The man running the booth asks Lolo to leave, but he still has one pitch. Uno ushers him away, and Lolo says, “I come back with a gun! Then what!”(78). There’s some heckling and “some white guy in the crowd yells out, ‘You’re just mad ’cause you suck!’” (79). Everyone laughs, further enraging Lolo, but he doesn’t cause any more trouble. Because there is a bet on the line, someone must take the pitch. Chico decides it will be Danny, so he pulls a drunk Danny up off the ground and brings him to the booth. Due to his condition, Uno does not perceive Danny as a threat, though the two have yet to interact since Uno beat him up. Uno says Danny can throw the last pitch and more betting ensues. As Danny prepares to pitch, Liberty approaches the booth and puts five dollars down on Danny. His first pitch is twenty miles per hour faster than Uno’s and the crowd is excited. For the first time, Uno looks at Danny with some admiration. Intrigued, Uno buys Danny more pitches, and each one he throws is faster than the last. The carney tells Danny his pitches are the fastest he’s seen in his six years of working there. Uno is mesmerized.
Chapter 9 Summary: “Mexican WhiteBoy”
Inspired by his performance, Danny goes to the local baseball field, the one where his dad played as a kid, and resumes working out the way he had in Leucadia. Unlike Leucadia, this field is covered in weeds and patches of dead grass, and the dugouts are tagged with graffiti. Danny’s pitching at the fair, even drunk, had been flawless, leading him to suspect his inability to control his pitching at tryouts was due to him tensing up in front of the Leucadia guys. Danny reflects on how perfect his pitching had been at one time and then connects his current inability to control his pitching to the breakup of his family.
After a rigorous workout, Danny heads to his Grandmother’s for a family dinner. Sofia tells Danny she’s heard Liberty likes him. He also learns Liberty does not speak English. Uncle Ray and his two friends rib Danny about the methods by which he and Liberty will communicate, then Ray says to Danny: “What I don’t get, D, is why your old man never taught you Spanish […] I think maybe he didn’t want you to be a Mexican. You know he got a big-ass chip on his shoulder ‘bout that, right? He gets pissed about how Mexicans get treated. Maybe he didn’t want that to happen to you”(87).
This is a sensitive issue for Danny and he begins digging his nails into his arm. Ray senses Danny’s sadness and tells him, “Your pops love you, D. More than you could ever know. Right now, you ‘bout all he’s got” (87). Ray tells Danny his dad will be back and encourages him to keep writing letters, that they mean a lot to his father. Danny ruminates over his inability to speak Spanish and laments his dad ever marrying a white woman. Uncle Ray asks Danny a favor: to compose a letter to a woman for him. Danny does it, happy at first that he can help, but he then decides being smart and well-spoken actually makes him less close to his uncle. Ray sincerely thanks him for his efforts and tells Danny he’s going to take him to a Padres game, a promise Danny knows Ray can’t keep. Danny feels so far away from being who “he is supposed to be” (90). He sees himself as fitting in nowhere: “a white boy among Mexicans, and a Mexican among white boys” (90). He watches and listens, though he can’t fully understand, as his Uncle Ray tells stories and the family laughs.
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
Family takes care of family, and the group takes care of its members. When Ray aggressively threatens Uno for what he’s done to Danny, Danny can see his father’s likeness in Ray’s rage. Despite the pain Uno has caused Danny, Ray is pleased that Danny does not call out Uno. Uno gets the message and will not lay another hand on Danny. Sofia also shows approval, telling Danny she’s not sure “how it is up in Leucadia, but down here it’s better when you deal with stuff on your own” (63). The group has its own rules and its members are the enforcers. Showing further disregard for the law, the group drives to Del Mar, about forty minutes north by freeway, with multiple open containers. Losing one’s driver’s license or ending up in jail is not a concern. Whether due to the kids’ perception that they operate by different rules or to characteristic feelings of teenage invincibility, they show no regard for traditional authority, nor do they consider the possible dangers or consequences of drinking and driving.
Lolo’s embarrassment over his inadequacy as a pitcher elicits bravado and he resorts to what works in National City: violence. It’s immediately clear how ineffective his tactics of intimidation are in the outside world. Lolo is mocked. He can’t threaten his way to being a good pitcher. It’s no surprise he is not good, as his only access to learning the game has been with a tennis ball and a stick in a cul-de-sac. He has the access his family’s finances will allow.
Danny’s drunkenness calms him. It’s made him feel happy and allowed him for a short time to let go of his anger/doubt and just pitch. He reveals his true talents and the carney confirms, objectively and as an outsider, that Danny is exceptional. Danny is so far superior, there is no excuse Uno could use to hide behind. Instead Uno develops some unspoken admiration, even some respect, for “this skinny GQ kid” (82). After the fair, when Danny begins to implement a disciplined, rigorous daily workout, it shows he is taking charge of the part of his life he feels he can. In this way, Danny becomes less a victim and more of an agent for himself. That night, he learns that Liberty likes him, but that she also speaks no English. As much as he is an outsider in her Spanish-speaking world, she is an outsider in his. Uncle Ray good-naturedly teases Danny about how they’ll communicate, and joking is another way Ray shows Danny he is family. It’s lost on Danny. He still sees himself as not like his family and not fitting in anywhere. He’s a “white boy among Mexicans, and a Mexican among white boys” (90).
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