Mexican WhiteBoy

Danny Lopez arrives in National City, a suburb just south of San Diego. The area’s proximity to the border makes it heavily Hispanic. Danny has come to spend the summer with his father’s family while his mother and sister are in San Francisco with his mother’s new boyfriend.

From the start, it’s clear Danny does not fit in. He is from a beach community in northern San Diego County,where he plays baseball and attends Leucadia Prep, an elite private school. When he arrives wearing surf-style clothing and Vans, he feels out of place and is self-conscious. Furthermore, he is sixteen, lanky and struggling to find his identity in the absence of his father.

Further complicating Danny’s feelings of abandonment is his sense that because of his mixed heritage—he is half Mexican and half white—he does not belong anywhere. He wants desperately, or at least he thinks he does, to fit into his dad’s big Mexican family. They accept, love and even admire Danny, but he sees his whiteness and relative privilege as obstacles that keep him separate from being a real part of the family. The Lopezes speak predominantly Spanish, which is another impediment for Danny. He feels that by spending time with his father’s family, he will become more Mexican, something he has told himself his father must have wanted.