Mexican WhiteBoy Themes

Danny, the protagonist of Mexican WhiteBoy, is half white and half Mexican, and as such he feels like he doesn’t fit in with either white people or Mexican people. His self-image changes depending on his surroundings, and he feels uncertain and unstable in his biracial identity; though Danny feels “too Mexican” at his mostly white prep school in Leucadia, he feels “too white” around his Mexican family and friends in National City. In…

At first, Danny and the other teenagers he hangs out with see their futures as predetermined paths, but they eventually grow to understand that their futures are open to many possibilities. As a child, Danny longs to be just like his dad, Javier. He writes at one point that he’s “destined” to be a pitcher like his dad. Upon learning that Javier is violent and abusive, though, Danny begins to see becoming like his…

Though Danny struggles with his identity specifically as a biracial person, he also faces the identity challenges that teenagers typically experience as they begin to enter adulthood. For much of the novel, Danny is desperate for a sense of belonging. —. However, at the climax of the story Danny realizes that it’s more important to come to terms with being on his own. Danny’s overwhelming stress about fitting in in National City is ultimately a…

The characters in Mexican WhiteBoy come from a wide range of cultural backgrounds. Sometimes cultural differences act as barriers separating certain groups from others, but they also serve to strengthen ties among friends and families. In general, the novel portrays white people, Black people, and Mexican people all living in different neighborhoods and having cultural differences (like wealth disparities) that cause tension among them. The Lopezes, Danny’s extended family, have a shared language and…