The First Rule of Punk

Malú’s Mom teaches Chicano Literature at a university in Chicago; her procurement of this position is the catalyst for the move from Florida to Chicago at the beginning of the novel. Malú’s mom is nicknamed “SuperMexican” by Malú due to her mother’s devotion to Mexican and Mexican American heritage.

As Malú’s primary caregiver, she often gets the short end of the stick, and leans toward being an authority figure for Malú for much of the novel, as opposed to being laissez-faire about Malú’s choices. Malú spends much of the book imagining that her mom is against Malú’s attempts at individualism; however, at the end of the book, she offers to Malú that she loves that Malú has “no problem being an individual no matter what others think,” adding that it’s “not an easy thing to do” (305).

Malú’s mom does not possess any of Malú’s punk-rock esprit de corps, and is consistently mortified by Malú’s aesthetic choices, especially Malú’s choice to dye her hair green. With that being said, early in the novel, she does allow Malú to keep on her eyeliner, telling her to wait and see what happens when she shows up at school with it on. She’s consistently balancing trying to let Malú find her own way in their world while also being a responsible parent.

Malú’s dad, who is white, lives in Florida and owns and operates Spins & Needles Records. He lives in an apartment above the record shop. Her father is a prominent figure early in the book, with Malú going over to his place for a last meal with him before she moves, then watching The Wizard of Oz with him. As Malú’s secondary caregiver (he is divorced from Malú’s mom), he gets to play the role of the cool parent, and it’s her father that Malú turns to for advice and comfort in the first few weeks that she’s in Chicago, and terribly homesick.

Malú’s dad’s role in Malú’s life shrinks as the novel progresses. This can be attributed to Malú’s maturation: As she grows, she’s also actively seeking out role models of the same gender who share her Mexican American heritage and who also harbor a punk/DIY aesthetic. Malú locates this person in Mrs. Hidalgo and tells her father as much. While he’s perhaps slightly hurt, he’s also accepting and flies to see Malú perform at the Alterna-Fiesta.

Joe Hidalgo, whose birth name is José, is a classmate of Malú’s at Posada Middle School. His parents own and operate Calaca Coffee. Joe plays guitar in the Co-Co’s, and while it’s never stated outright, would seem to be Malú’s implicit love interest in the book. In addition to being a musician, Joe is a talented artist and sketches the drawing that becomes the Co-Co’s band shirt. Further, it’s Joe who recruits Benny to play in the band.

Much like Malú, Joe, especially early in the novel, largely eschews his Mexican heritage. It’s not that he’s actively against learning about it; rather, it’s simply not that interesting to him, in part because he also works at Calaca and is surrounded by it for much of his days. Selena Ramirez deems both Joe and Malú “coconuts”: a disparaging term for Mexican Americans who supposedly cast off their heritage in favor of white culture, mainstream or otherwise.

Selena Ramirez is Malú’s classmate and the novel’s chief antagonist. Selena is everything that Malú is not: She embraces her Mexican heritage and shares it with the world through dance. Further, Selena is part of a clique called the Candy Crew: a group of students who would seem to embrace mainstream, consumer capitalist culture in a manner that is decidedly not punk, and not DIY.

Selena consistently chides Malú for her punk-rock aesthetic and deems her a “weirdo.” She pokes fun at Malú for her lack of fluency in Spanish. She makes fun of her again when Malú goes to the dance studio with her mom and fails to effectively exact a traditional Mexican dance. It’s during this dance class that Malú first views Selena as more multi-faceted than she first imagined: Selena, wanting to branch out culturally, and through her own mode of art, asks her mom to take Irish dance classes, to which her mom flatly says no. Later in the novel, Diana, a member of Selena’s clique, makes fun of her for watching Irish dance videos on her phone.

After the Co-Co’s perform, Selena and Malú are able to reach something akin to a tense truce, with Selena admitting that the band’s performance wasn’t bad and Malú apologizing after chiding Selena for wanting to take Irish dance classes, and not being able to. The reader can ultimately view Selena as a sort of mirror version of Malú: She is secure in her Mexican American identity, and now seeks to branch out via her art. Malú, meanwhile, is secure in her punk identity, but less so in her Mexican American identity, at least until the end of the novel.

Oralia Bernal is Joe’s grandmother and lives in the same apartment building as Malú and her mom. She’s kind, patient, and offers Malú pieces of advice over the course of the novel. It’s through Oralia that Malú first becomes familiar with the singer Lola Beltrán, who will serve as a means for Malú to merge the punk and Mexican American portions of her burgeoning identity through doing a punk-rock version of a Beltrán tune with the Co-Co’s. Further, it’s Oralia who suggests repairing things with Joe, thereby allowing the band to play on. As Mrs. Hidalgo and Malú are kindred spirits—like Malú, Mrs. Hidalgo, who is Oralia’s daughter, was precocious in her youth—Oralia harbors an innate understanding of the trials Malú faces over the course of the novel, having advised her own daughter in similar situations decades before.

Mrs. Ana Hidalgo is Joe’s mom. She and her husband own and operate Calaca Coffee. Mrs. Hidalgo begins as a minor character in the book but winds up serving as, arguably, Malú’s central role model by its conclusion. The reason for this is that in Mrs. Hidalgo, Malú is able to locate her ideal synthesis of punk rock and Mexican heritage. Mrs. Hidalgo, like Malú, was a rabble-rouser in her youth, protesting the school prom because many students couldn’t afford to buy outfits for it and throwing her own alternative party instead. It’s this act that will serve as inspiration for Malú to exact the Alterna-Fiesta. Further, Mrs. Hidalgo has several tattoos, a staple of punk rock aesthetic, but it’s the content of these tattoos that matter most. One of the tattoos is “a cluster of pink and orange flowers that looked like balls of tiny petals” (157). These are likely dahlias, the national flower of Mexico. Another of her tattoos is a Mexican version of Pippi Longstocking; Mrs. Hidalgo calls this image “la Pippi” (157). The Longstocking narratives were originally popularized in their author’s native Sweden in the 1940s, before being translated into American English in the 1950s. Here, Pérez takes the European Longstocking and transforms her into a Mexican American version thereof. Like Longstocking, Malú is also subversive and mischievous, while at the same time charming and compassionate.

Hidalgo also introduces Malú to many different musical artists who are Mexican or Mexican American and also play punk music, including The Brat and The Zeros. Calaca Coffee has a wall of fame devoted to such artists, and it’s through the artists on this wall of fame that Malú sees examples of non-white punk bands. Additionally, in Mrs. Hidalgo, Malú locates an example of a strong, independent woman who, unlike Malú’s mother, harbors a punk aesthetic.

Benny is a classmate of Malú’s and a band member in the Co-Co’s. It’s implied that he’s most the talented musician in the band, and it takes some convincing on Joe’s part to get Benny to join the group. While at first he plans to learn the bass, in order to fill that gap in the band, once the group decides to cover a Lola Beltrán song, he reverts to playing his favored instrument: the trumpet. Joe and Benny have known each other since they were little kids, formerly playing in a mariachi band together. He passes on the opportunity to play with other bands in the Fall Fiesta and is irked when it seems like the Co-Co’s will break up.