Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass by Meg Medina

Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass by Meg Medina

2 out of 5 Stars

Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass Review

Yaqui Delgado Wants To Kick Your Ass is about a young teen named Piddy Sanchez who finds herself in an uncommon and oppressing situation, where she is, unfortunately, the prey of a notorious bully. The story envelopes over her experiences at her new school, which are incredibly distraught: a girl who Piddy hardly even knows is on to her, her grades are dropping as she worries about her bully and her unknown father, her mother won't understand who she is, and the world just seems to be highly against her at any given moment. This book is about the effects of bullying on a young girl’s life, and the turns taken to prevent it, combat it, and in the end, overcome it (or in this case run away from it, kinda).

In contrast to a plentiful of reviews, Yaqui Delgado Wants To Kick Your Ass is not as daring and brave as it's title suggests. It's an eye catching title, yes. But it's story falls flat and isn't able to regain its full potential throughout the story-line. The story doesn't take chances, the audience is being treated to the same old-same old plot (this time with a mostly Latino/a cast). The outcome of the story seems flimsy and lazy, the main character is a bore, and an unintended juvenile glare is felt throughout the entirety of the story, even amongst the adults. Piddy’s voice is not strong; relating to her at times was a struggle.

The story fell rock bottom when an entirely unnecessary ‘romance’ (I don’t even know if it was worthy enough of being called a ‘romance’ due to its insufficiency, lack of reason, and complete bore). In all honesty, the book could have gone without all the kissy-kissy lovey-dovey nonsense between Joey and Piddy. It was so surprising when they kissed because it seemed as if the whole thing came out of nowhere.
If Piddy was trying to confide in a boy due to her undesirable circumstances for comfort and reassurance, that could have been elucidated better in order to fit the story. Romance isn’t bad. In fact, it’s one of the hardest stunts to pull off well in literature, film, and music. Romance in these three mediums should have the ability to communicate with itself and with the audience. We’ve all heard someone say that ‘for love to work there needs to be communication’, there is a reason for that you know. The potential for romance is always there, it is the way in which it is commonly used (especially in YA) that often creates a problem. After all, what is a story without any love? (And just in case anyone forgot, friendship is love too, by the way.)
Getting back to the book here; the romance wasn’t played off badly because it was meaningless, it was played off badly because it was dumb.

You’d think because the book if named after a specific character in the book, that the character would actually be a little significant. Well, Yaqui Delgado Wants To Kick Your Ass definitely doesn’t check that box. This is another great downfall of the book; it’s a little sad that we didn’t get to know about the bully at all. It was just that ‘the good person is good’ and ‘the bad person is bad’ and that’s all the audience gets. And the fact that Yaqui lives in the ghetto isn’t an explanation as to why she is mean and vicious. It’s just another stereotype that suggests that people are the outcome of their environments. The audience got to know absolutely nothing about Yaqui except for where she lived. The only times she talked were to defend herself, the only times she was included in the story at all was when she was being a relentless beast… It’s all too biased. The book didn’t cross boundaries, it played very strictly by the rules. The ending was absolutely pathetic. Everything ended up working out for Piddy, she made up with her best friend, her mother is loosening up, she got to know the truth about her father, she moved schools (I think I was most irritated by this. There was no standoff. I don’t even think Yaqui and Piddy even exchanged words in the whole book! Yaqui just moved schools. That’s it), Piddy got into the school she wanted to get into; her life was practically brought back together.

I was so excited to read this story (it was on my ‘I really want’ list). Although, as you can probably tell from my review, I was left greatly disappointed. It has a cool title, unfortunately, the story doesn’t manage to match.