Yaqui Delgado Wants To Kick Your Ass is a 2013 young adult novel by Meg Medina.
It tells the story about sixteen-year-old Latina high school student, Piedad "Piddy" Sanchez, who is new to her school. One morning on her first day, Piddy is told in no uncertain terms by a girl that "Yaqui Delgado wants to kick your ass". Piddy wonders how she could've drawn the wrath of a girl she has never met. Word flies around that Yaqui thinks Piddy is stuck up, shakes her ass too much, is not "Latina enough" for her light skin, and that she is somehow after the latter's boyfriend (whom Piddy has also never met).
Pretty soon, Yaqui makes good on her threats as she and her gang physically torment Piddy, going as far as tracking her down at her weekend job at a hair salon. She is quickly frightened for her life, resulting in her grades dropping and ultimately missing school altogether. Through her misery she finds some solace in a boy named Joey, whose mother is the victim of perpetual domestic abuse. Meanwhile, Piddy is on the search for her deadbeat Dominican father.
Book contains examples of:
- Adults Are Useless: The grownups at school take their sweet time to figure out that something is wrong with Piddy. Ultimately Downplayed as they do ask her what's wrong, but Piddy refuses to tell them at first.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: Because of the harassment he gets for being gay, Rob prefers to keep to himself. That is, until Piddy covers up a homophobic slur that had been scribbled on his locker, after which he quietly protects her from the background by removing an essay that she obviously based off of Yacqui. He ultimately reports Yaqui's videotaped assault against Piddy. At the end he hands her an application for McCleary school.
- But Not Too White: One of Yaqui's alleged reasons for hating Piddy is because of the latter's light skin, deeming her not "Latina enough". Her messenger girl Vanesa criticises Paddy for shaking her "tight white ass".
- Bittersweet Ending: Piddy's bullying ultimately reaches the principal, who plans to expel Yaqui after watching the beating-up video. Unfortunately, he cannot expel Yaqui's gang, and advises Piddy to transfer schools. She does just that, but now carries PTSD from her violent experiences at Yaqui's hands. She also discovers the her missing father had an affair with her mother while being married to another woman, and has no intention on ever reaching out to his secret family. On the bright side, Piddy returns to her old high school, reunites with Mitzi, and is eventually accepted into McCleary.
- Category Traitor: Piddy gets a lot of flack from Yaqui and her gang for not being a stereotypical Latina: she's light skinned, speaks without an accent, is in honors classes, and is a bit of a loner.
- Crapsack World: Yaqui lives in a run-down hood called the Bland.
- Disappeared Dad: Piddy's father, Augustin, left the house before her birth, but Clara has zero interest in discussing him. It is later revealed that Clara was Augustin's fiancee, but became suspicious when he would take extended leaves of absence to Santo Domingo to "visit his mother". One day, a Dominican woman shows up to Salon Corazon to confront Clara, explaining that he already has a wife back in the Dominican Republic. After having his infidelity discovered, Augustin ceases contact with Clara. Having learned all this, Piddy accepts the fact that her father likely has zero interest in reaching out to her, and stops her search for him.
- Fan Disservice: Piddy's bare chest is exposed on-camera while getting beaten up by Yaqui's gang (unfortunately, many viewers still found this titillating). Later on, Joey slowly undoes Piddy's top during an intimate moment, but is too shocked by her injuries to continue further.
- From Bad to Worse: When Piddy shows up to school early to find out more about Yaqui, her alleged hater, she gets catcalled by two Latino guys for shaking her hips while walking. One of them happens to be Alfredo, Yaqui's boyfriend. Word of this encounter reaches Yaqui, which lands Piddy in bigger heat when the former assumes she was trying to seduce Alfredo.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Yaqui firmly believes Piddy is after her boyfriend, and sics her girl gang on her.
- Hypocrite: Deconstructed. Piddy's mother Clara frequently slut-shames the loitering barrio girls (calling them chusmas), and warns Piddy not to become one of them. Later it is revealed that she had an affair with Piddy's father, who was already married.
- Inner City School: Daniel Jones High School is one of these, being spray-painted with graffiti, sporting a majority-minority demographic (primarily Latinos, African-Americans, and Asians), and being located in Queens.
- Internalized Categorism: Clara is a subtle example, as she looks down on the younger Latina girls hanging around the neighbourhood, refuses to associate with Lila's majority-Latina clientele from the salon, and generalizes all Caribbean artists as cocaine users, insisting that Piddy listen to European classical composers (like Bach) instead. Of course, she associates these with the trauma of having been in an extra-marital affair with Piddy's Dominican father.
- Latino Is Brown: Despite being half-Cuban, half-Dominican, Piddy is light skinned, which gets her Latina identity questioned by Darlene, and apparently Yaqui. Since Yaqui is the one causing a scene over this, it can be presumed that she has the typical "Latina look".
- Meaningful Name: The protagonist's nickname, Piddy, is pronounced like "pity", and appropriately so as she becomes a pitiful character given all the shit she goes through at the hands of the school bully. Her full name, Piedad, is this to a lesser extent.
- Nom de Mom: Averted. Piddy uses her father, Augustin Sanchez's last name despite him being completely absent. She believes that Clara, after having given birth to her, felt pressured to write the father's name on Piddy's birth certificate instead of claiming ignorance so the doctors won't write her off as a promiscuous Latina woman who couldn't be bothered to remember the men she slept with.note
- Not So Above It All: Despite looking down on Caribbean music, Clara is seen at one point moving her hips to a salsa tune at Lila's party.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: One of Yaqui's goons films Piddy getting beaten up by the gang and posts it online. This same video is shown to the principal, who plans to use it as evidence against Yaqui to get her expelled, and charged for assault.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Piddy feels a longing sense of comradery with Yaqui on account of their shared Latina heritage, secretly wishing that she and her could've been tight-knit friends instead of enemies.Yaqui and me, we should be two hermanas, a sisterhood of Latinas. We eat the same food. We talk the same way. We come from countries that are like rooms in one big house, but, instead, we're worlds apart.
- Parental Neglect: At the principal's office when Lila wonders if the school had tried contacting Yaqui's parents, the principal only says that her parents are not available to reach out to. It's possible that either Yaqui does not live with them, or they are physically present but neglectful.
- Sex for Solace: In despair after her beating, Piddy begs Joey to have sex with her so she can feel better. He silently refuses after seeing the extensive injuries all over her body. She thinks he was simply turned off, though the book implies he did not want to take sexual advantage of a recent assault victim.
- Slut-Shaming:
- Yaqui had apparently called Piddy a skank for seemingly no reason, and later has her gang call out Piddy for "shaking her ass too much", convinced that the latter was trying to steal her boyfriend.
- When the video of Piddy getting getting beaten up by Yaqui's gang goes viral, some of the viewers are unconcerned by the fact that a young girl is being brutally assaulted, instead commenting on Piddy's exposed breasts, with one commenter even calling her a slut.
- Token Minority: Darlene tries to convince Piddy to take apply at a science pre-secondary school, claiming that she will most likely be accepted because she "has the Latina advantage".
- What the Hell, Hero?: When Piddy confronts Mitzi for supposedly abandoning her for her new friends, the latter calls her out for not only acting mean, but looking mean too for her new chonga-like appearance.
