Mexican WhiteBoy

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. Poet Charif Shanahan, who is the son of an Irish-American father and a Moroccan mother, has called growing up multiracial in America an experience that was rife with “instability.” He explains in this PBS News Hour article: “Instability is the word because there are different ways my body will be read and interpreted depending on who’s looking. . . This creates all sorts of interesting tensions and moments, in a very personal kind of way, of folks being confused, thinking they understand and not understanding.” Consider what Shanahan is saying about the experience of multiracial people in America. Unpack the meaning(s) of what it might mean that his body is being “read” by people, and discuss what he means by “interesting tensions and moments” and “thinking they understand and not understanding,” in terms of what it means to have a multiracial identity. 

Teaching Suggestion: Students may share their own personal stories of being multiracial and how they relate to the Shanahan quote. You may also elect to analyze this quotation closely and guide a larger conversation on multiracial identity and how it affects self-development. For example, Shanahan understands people who are looking at him to be “reading and interpreting” him – as in, trying to make sense of what might they might see as incongruous identifying features and cultural markers. The “interesting tensions and moments” could refer to, for example, when people make assumptions around his identity that are false. Ask students to think about how making assumptions about a person’s identity might lead to “tense and/or interesting” moments.

• In his poem “Trace Evidence,” Charif Shanahan further explores his experience of growing up straddling two cultures.
• “Being Multiracial in America” is a short documentary by The New York Times featuring Rutgers University students who discuss the joys and challenges of being Americans of mixed race.

2. In this brief video created by Random House Kids called “Meet Matt de la Peña,” the author gives a short overview of his biography, mentioning that he fell in love with literature late in life and that, growing up, he used to feel excluded from the world of literature, because he didn’t see people like himself – a multiracial Mexican American – represented there. What other details struck you about the video? What do you think about the author saying he grew up a “reluctant reader”?

Teaching Suggestion: Guide students to use Matt de la Peña’s own biography as a jumping off point to discuss The Limiting Nature of Homogeneous Groups. Draw attention to the fact that, part of de la Peña’s ethos as an author is to create literature that allows marginalized groups to broaden the world beyond their own immediate groups, and he always tries to include details in his book that will appeal to “reluctant readers.” De la Peña says it is an “unlikely story” that he became an author, because he wasn’t a great student or enthusiastic reader when he was growing up – he was more focused on basketball, which is what brought him to college, making him the first member in his family to attend college.

• In this AdLit video, Matt de la Peña discusses how he likes to “challenge assumptions about identity in his books.”
• This transcript from Reading Rockets’ interview with Matt de la Peña offers other details about de la Peña’s life, including how being on the cultural margins helps him as a reader and how growing up in a border community has influenced his life and writing.

Differentiation Suggestion: For advanced learners, you may want to encourage a deeper understanding of why it is important to “write from the margins,” as de la Peña aims to do in his work. You can share with those students this scholarly article published in the South Atlantic Review in Spring 2019, in which Latino educator Lorraine Lopez shares her struggles as an author writing from “the margins of race and culture and social class.”

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the novel.

1. Think of the multiple parts of your identity – the things that make you you. Make a list of all the components you can think of, and notice in what ways those components are congruent and in which they seem to conflict. Do you consider yourself a “brother/sister”? How about a “student”? Or an “athlete”? Which parts of your identity complement each other? Do some seem to conflict with each other? Explain.

Teaching Suggestion: Ask students if they have ever heard of the sociological term “intersectionality” and talk about what it means to them. To draw out the importance of intersectionality (especially as it pertains to those with a multiracial identity, that is, one that consists of one or more marginalized races), focus students’ attention on the numerous facets of their identity, having them come up with comprehensive lists of the many ways they might describe themselves. This could include their role in their family (brother/sister, cousin, son/daughter), their race, their age, their role in school (student, athlete, band member), their cultural affiliations, their hobbies, their personality, and many more facets of identity.

• In this Learning for Justice clip entitled “Intersectionality 101,” students are given a sweeping 3-minute overview of the sociological concept.
• This page includes an downloadable infographic created by the National Association of School Psychologists called “Understanding Intersectionality” that shows how members of historically oppressed groups may experience multiple forms of discrimination at once.