If you’re reading this review, you probably know just how petrifying high school can be. Not fitting in, not feeling good enough, getting good grades, romance, friendships, body image. High school is a lot, on top of the struggles with family and identity that are often prevalent as you make the transition into a young adult. Add social media and cyber-bullying into the mix and high school? Yeah, it’s hell.
Meg Medina’s award-winning novel, Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass, is expertly transformed by Mel Valentine Vargas into a graphic novel that is pertinent to teens of today. It takes elements that were strongest in Medina’s 2013 prose and brings them to life in a revitalizing way. We still feel the yearning, loneliness, and vulnerability that Medina crafted for us through Piddy Sanchez’s story, but Vargas expertly gets us to know Piddy through their contemporary art.
“Meg Medina’s award-winning novel, “Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass”, is expertly transformed by Mel Valentine Vargas into a graphic novel that is pertinent to teens of today. It takes elements that were strongest in Medina’s 2013 prose and brings them to life in a revitalizing way. ”
Piddy Sanchez feels herself slipping, and she feels alone.
Her mom Clara works late, and is doing the best she can to raise Piddy as a single mom. And despite her mom doing everything she can for Piddy, Piddy still feels like a piece of her is missing. Her father is no longer in the picture, choosing instead to live with a second family in the Dominican Republic. Her best friend Mitzi is actually fitting in at her school, and forgetting about Piddy. Her grades are falling, she's skipping class, she’s had to move, and oh yeah, Yaqui Delgado wants to kick her ass.
Though the title is centered around Yaqui, we actually get to know her very little, except that she hates Piddy for being the new girl at school. She can’t stand the way that Piddy shakes her hips when she walks. Piddy isn’t the stereotypical Latina, but she’s just as Latina as the rest of the girls at school. Still, she knows she doesn’t fit in because of her accentless Spanish, her light skin, and her adeptness in the classroom. And Yaqui blames Piddy for talking to Alfredo, a boy that Yaqui has her eyes on.
So, after weeks of bullying, Yaqui finally kicks Piddy’s ass. And posts the fight online for the whole school to see.
We know today just as we did back in 2013 (when Meg Medina’s prose novel was first published) about the intensity of cyberbullying. The fact is, social media has become even more of a staple in young teens’ lives than it was ten years ago. It is proof that young readers, young Latine readers, need Piddy’s story now more than ever.
Yes, Piddy Sanchez is going through it. Kids her age can suck, and the pressure to succeed and fit in threatens to make her head explode. But, the most important thing that Piddy learns through all of this is that she is never alone. She learned how to play piano from her mom, how to dance and shake her hips from Lila, and how to make new friends and try new things from her best friend Mitzi. She has friends and family who love her and will stick up for her no matter what she is going through. With a strong community around her, Piddy learns to stick up for herself and gathers the strength to not give up, even when it feels like the entire world is against her.
Meg Medina is the current National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. She is the author of the Newbery Medal–winning book Merci Suárez Changes Gears, which was also a 2018 Kirkus Prize finalist, and which was followed by two more acclaimed books about the Suárez family: Merci Suárez Can’t Dance and Merci Suárez Plays It Cool. Her young adult novels include Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass, which won the 2014 Pura Belpré Author Award, and which will be published in 2023 as a graphic novel illustrated by Mel Valentine Vargas; Burn Baby Burn, which was long-listed for the National Book Award; and The Girl Who Could Silence the Wind. She is also the author of picture books Evelyn Del Rey Is Moving Away, illustrated by Sonia Sánchez, Jumpstart’s 2020 Read for the Record selection; Mango, Abuela, and Me, illustrated by Angela Dominguez, which was a Pura Belpré Author Award Honor Book; and Tía Isa Wants a Car, illustrated by Claudio Muñoz, which won the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award; and the biography for young readers She Persisted: Sonia Sotomayor. The daughter of Cuban immigrants, she grew up in Queens, New York, and now lives in Richmond, Virginia.
Mel Valentine Vargas is a Queer Cuban-American graphic novelist based in Chicago. They hope to draw the kind of illustrations that their younger self, and others like them, could have seen to feel less alone. Mel Valentine Vargas loves singing in Spanish, playing farming video games, and eating lots of gyoza with their friends.
Illianna Gonzalez-Soto lives in San Diego, CA with her dog Fluffers and her ever-growing #tbr pile. She currently works with ReedPop as a Marketing Coordinator. Follow her on Twitter & Instagram @iliannagsoto.
