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 24-27Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 24 Summary: “Along for the Ride”
Ray shows up with something urgent to tell his brother Tommy. He rolls and lights a joint as he nervously recalls the incident that happened the day prior. Uncle Ray invites Danny to go shopping to get food for Sunday dinner. When they get in the car, he reintroduces Danny to his two buddies, Tim and Rico. On the way to the store, they speak of Rico’s misadventures with a woman who threw him out on the street, and then Rico starts peppering Danny with questions, asking whether he’d ever gotten “slick with one of them uniform-wearing girls?” (201) Ray tells Rico in a tone that implies he’s dead serious to lay off Danny; he’s his big brother’s kid. They get to the market and buy all the groceries, but when they pull out of the parking lot, a white man on a bike runs into the Bronco. It’s unclear as to whether the man is on drugs, homeless and/or mentally ill, or just in a daze from having run into a car. The reason matters not to Ray who becomes immediately enraged and turns his car around. Rico is urging Ray on while Tim is in the front seat trying to calm Ray down. The cyclist, now on foot, is walking toward the truck when Ray steps on the gas and intentionally runs him over. As Ray retells this part, he makes no eye contact with Tommy: “Ray hit the gas and ran smack into the guy, a nasty thumping sound against the hood” (205).
The cyclist is at first limp but then somehow is able to get up and starts walking toward Ray’s window as though he’s going to punch him. Ray drags the man halfway into the front seat and proceeds to beat him up. Blood flew everywhere as the three men pounded his face and torso. They hit him so many times, the sounds of the punches changed, indicating they were beating broken bones and open flesh. Danny is watching as they throw him from the car. Instead of speeding off, Uncle Ray reverses the Bronco and runs over the guys’ legs. Danny could actually hear and feel the bones crush and snap under the tires and vomits on himself. On the drive home, the three men are yelling and Danny watches Ray through the rearview mirror: “His eyes looked psycho…full of rage” (207). Danny notes the strong resemblance Ray has to Danny’s own father.
Chapter 25 Summary: “A Last Las Palmas Practice Session”
Uno knows nothing of the incident with Uncle Ray, so when Danny is distant, Uno worries Danny might be tired of their arrangement. Uno knows Danny is getting ready to return to Leucadia with his mom and is surprised when it occurs to him how hard it will be to say goodbye. He sees “something strange in Danny’s eyes […]But he has no idea what it is” (209). He wonders if he’s done something to push Danny away, or if they are just growing apart.
Chapter 26 Summary: “Here I Come”
Sofia tells Uno she feels like everyone is leaving and that she’s being left behind. He tells her with her good grades, she should think about college. Sofia replies, “What do I know about college? Nobody I know’s ever been there. Nobody in my family, that’s for sure” (211). He tells her she’s smart and that she “could be a lawyer or something’” (211). Switching gears, Uno asks about Danny and why he’s been acting so strange. Sofia tells him it’s because of “this thing with his dad” (211). Uno wants to know what happened and Sofia evades the question by telling Uno about a cute little girl she and Carmen had seen at the park a few weeks prior. The little girl would independently climb to the top of the steps and position herself at the top of the slide, looking down to her doting parents, and then announce she was going to go down the slide. Sofia compares herself to this girl:
I kept thinking, Man, I bet I was like that when I was little, too. What’s happened to me since then? We all start out believing we can do anything. Even Mexican kids that grow up here. But at some point, we lose it. It totally disappears. Like me, for example. Why is that? (212).
Uno tells her this is nonsense and how she had once been that girl, full of hope and optimism and a future, but once she got to the bottom of the slide, there was nothing there. Uno tries to understand what she’s saying, but he can’t totally relate. Sofia climbs to the top of the stairs, and says, “Here I come,” and lands in Uno’s arms. They kiss and then laugh. Uno really wants to know about Danny’s dad. Sofia says she’ll tell him and swears him to secrecy.
Chapter 27 Summary: “Danny and Uno at Petco Park”
Danny and Uno go to Petco Park to see a Padres game, presumably thanks to the tickets Randy was going to send Danny. Neither boy has ever been to a professional sporting event, ever, and both are excited. The boys take in the beauty of the stadium, and “their mouths drop at the sight of the pristine baseball diamond” (214). Eventually the boys take their seats and the game begins.
Vendors circulate, selling snacks and beverages. Danny wants a hot dog and signals the vendor. As he approaches, Danny realizes he knows this man. It’s the “big Mexican …but what’s he doing slinging hot dogs?” (217). Recognizing Danny, the “scout” backs away, head down, and disappears into the concourse. Danny catches up to him and asks if he’s the scout they always see. When Danny asks about the hot dogs, the man tells him that selling hot dogs is his job.Danny tells him he remembers seeing him in the bleachers at his school, watching Kyle Sorenson.The man replies, “I was there to watch you”(218). Danny is confused. The two go to a break room behind the concessions where he tells Danny, “Your dad asked me if I could [watch over you]. I said yes, of course” (218).
He goes on to tell Danny how his dad had saved his life. Danny hears the man, but he his confused. His thoughts race. This man is “[s]omebody who knows his dad. Maybe knows where he is right now. Today. [Danny] wants to ask, but he can’t get the words out. He doesn’t want to know the answer” (219). Danny asks this man how his father saved him, and he tells Danny to ask his mother. Danny tells him he doesn’t want to, so he tells Danny the truth:
[I] got jumped by a bunch of black guys. In front of everybody. They tried to kill me. Your dad was the only one who stepped in. He beat two of them really bad and the others backed away. They never did this to me again. And, me and your dad turned into friends […] This happened in prison […] I will never forget this (220).
Danny asks if he ever went to Mexico. The man says no and that his dad is still in prison. When Danny returns to his seat, it’s clear something has transpired. He is completely distracted. On top of that, he’s forgotten the hot dogs. Uno recounts all that he’s missed and tells Danny that he’s already better than some of the professional pitchers.
When Danny returns home, he goes in the bathroom, looks in the mirror, and then proceeds to dig his nails into his arm. He “doesn’t feel anything. He is hollow like the sound inside a seashell” (222). For Danny, “It’s not that his dad’s in jail. It’s that nobody told him. Like he’s a little kid”(222).Acknowledging this, he can still feel nothing. He begins cutting himself with tweezers. He draws blood and is finally able to feel a sensation, pain. Sofia is banging on the bathroom door. Danny is bleeding a lot and it’s taking time to clean up the blood. When he thinks it’s clean, he exits the bathroom, but he is stopped by Sofia, who sees what he has done. She starts crying. He apologizes to her. She shakes her head, saying, “But you didn’t do nothin’ wrong” (224). She repeats this phrase over and over while holding pressure on Danny’s arm. The two sit in silence until they fall asleep. They do not speak about what happened.
Chapters 24-27 Analysis
Danny has been exposed to a level of violence he’s likely never imagined let alone experienced, and it makes him physically sick. On the drive home Danny is shell shocked, numb. When he catches his uncle’s face in the rearview mirror, he sees the same crazed look he remembers seeing on his father’s face. “He looked psycho…full of rage. And then it was Danny’s dad’s eyes. Like the time at the beach with the white guy, him mom holding Julia and crying. Or on the freeway. When somebody cut him off. Or at Danny’s little League game when the ump made a bad call. Or in the parking when somebody snuck into his spot. And then it was somebody else” (207). This incident marks the climax in Mexican WhiteBoy. Up until this moment, Danny wanted nothing more than to be one of the Lopez men. He would have traded his education and any advantage he might have to be a real Lopez from el barrio. Danny had overlooked or averted seeing anything troubling in the lifestyle many lived in his father’s neighborhood, but this changes Danny, awakening him to some of the harshest realities of living as a Lopez in National City. The moment Danny sees his father in Uncle Ray as he violently and grotesquely takes the life of another man, everything he is suppressing about his father and his behavior comes to the surface. It’s as though Danny is liberated from wanting be like or even see his father. It’s as though, in an instant, he accepts who his dad is and what he has done.
Sofia’s explanation to Uno about the little girl in the playground who says to her parents and to the world, “Here I come” (212), is her acknowledgement that if she stays in her current environment, her future is limited. She wonders how it is she’s lost all the hope she once had for her future. Uno does not understand, nor validate her thinking. Perhaps it is because he has always seen her as having a family and being a good student, or it could be due to the fact that Senior has helped Uno to see possibilities for his own future. Uno believes if he can have hope, then Sofia certainly should too. The difference is no one is taking the kind of interest in Sofia that Senior does in Uno. There is no woman in her life to model success for her. There has been discussion amongst Sofia’s friends of prostitution and teen pregnancy, but her peers never discuss college or a career. Sofia has the potential, but she doesn’t have any way or anyone to help her unlock it.
When the Scout tells Danny that his father is in jail and he follows Danny on behalf of his father, Danny is stunned. He does here some good messages as well, particularly about how his dad always brags about what a good kid Danny is. However, he still can’t make sense of it and is more confused than ever. He is angered by the fact no one told him. He knows he should want to cry, but he is numb, which he interprets to mean he is “not even a real person” (222). When he cuts himself with tweezers and bleeds profusely, he finally feels. It’s relief, but it’s pain and is obviously not a healthy or sustainable way of feeling alive. Because no one ever told him about his father, he’d burdened himself for three years thinking he was to blame for his father’s abandonment.
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