Mexikid: A Graphic Memoir

Pedro is both the protagonist and first-person narrator of Mexikid. His age is not specified, but he is most likely similar in age to the book’s middle grade readers. As the seventh of the nine children in the Martín family, he’s part of the younger set of four who were born in the United States. He is an open and honest narrator who offers up both the positives and negatives he sees in his family life, his parents’ home country of Mexico, and himself. He describes the teasing he endures for being “barrel” shaped (16), and he admits that several of his siblings think he is “weird” because of his love for Star Wars, action figures, and the comic books he both collects and creates (4). Martín reflects Pedro’s sense of humor visually across the graphic memoir. He creates an elaborate diagram comparing the Winnebago full of children to a pinball machine and wryly compares the line at the border crossing to a line at Disneyland, “but with way more automatic weapons” (67).

As the protagonist of a coming-of-age story, Pedro has a dynamic character arc.