The First Rule of Punk

At its core, The First Rule of Punk is about Malú learning who she is; she is about to enter her teen years and finds herself, following her move to Chicago, geographically separated from her father and with a mother who, while ultimately very supportive, is often unaware of the ins and outs of Malú’s life. Further complicating Malú’s journey toward adulthood is that her father is white, and her mother is first-generation Mexican American. Malú’s maternal grandfather has passed away, after which Malú’s grandmother moved from Florida back to California, where she grew up. The effective disappearance of the generation that immigrated from Mexico to the US from Malú’s life functions as metaphor for Malú’s own feelings toward her Hispanic background early in the book—Malú is largely disinterested in embracing this part of her identity, focusing instead on music and making zines.

Complicating this further is the fact that Malú has a diverse racial background. Malú is unhappy with her mom for much of the book for moving Malú away from Florida, and, by extension, her dad and all she’s familiar with. While by the end of the book this notion shifts, early in the novel, Malú’s love of punk arrives as aligned with whiteness; the reader witnesses this perhaps most clearly in the Converse sneakers Malú chooses to wear, and which were a gift from her father. Malú’s punk/DIY aesthetic, then, is a way not only for her to eschew and refute mainstream, consumer-capitalist culture but also for her to disavow her Mexican heritage.

This, of course, will shift over the narrative arc of the book, with Malú overlaying her punk identity with her Mexican American identity. Malú’s move to Chicago finds her suddenly surrounded by opportunities for and examples of the Mexican American portion of her identity. Her middle school is named after José Guadalupe Posada, a famous Mexican political artist who used traditional Mexican symbology to critique the Mexican political machinations of his time. Malú does this same thing through the Co-Co’s and the Alterna-Fiesta, transforming a Lola Beltrán tune into a punk song and playing in the school parking lot after being disallowed from performing in the Fall Fiesta’s talent show.

The character of Selena Ramirez is, in part, Malú’s chief antagonist in the novel because Selena arrives as more aware of—and expert in—her Mexican heritage. Selena mocks Malú’s poor Spanish, steals and makes fun of her zine, and calls both Malú and Joe “coconuts”: a derogatory term for those of Latinx descent who seem to have deliberately set aside their non-white heritage in favor of something else. This difference in competence, in regard to understanding and exacting Mexican heritage, is perhaps seen most clearly when Malú and her mom go to the Ramirez dance studio, to take a beginners’ class in traditional Mexican folkloric dance. Selena has won awards for dancing; Malú can essentially not perform this dance at all, which makes sense, as it’s her very first time attempting it. Nonetheless, the subtext of this inability is that Malú is far removed from her Mexican roots, a fact Selena consistently lets her know about.

Over the course of the book, Malú embraces these roots more and more, and, in doing so, becomes her own person, as she learns more and more about celebrated artists like Posada, Lola Beltrán, and Mexican American punk band The Brat through the characters of Oralia Bernal and Mrs. Hidalgo.