We’ve been having so much fun reading together since we launched our on-line book club last year. We’re continuing with our pick for October with Matt de la Pena’s Mexican Whiteboy.
Join us Sunday October 8 at 4pm PACIFIC on the phone (it’s a community call), listen live on your computer, or talk with us in the chat room to discuss this wonderful book. And remember to visit our Goodreads page and leave a comment as you’re reading and get to know each other in advance of our talk!
Our Literary and Workshop Director Jamie Moore and Festival Founder Heidi Durrow lead the discussion. If you can’t join us live, you can always download the podcast from itunes. You can also submit any questions or comments you have on our Goodreads book club page. What’s your favorite line from the book? What’s your favorite scene? We’ll read your comments on the air! We can’t wait to talk with you about another great book about the Mixed experience.
Book SynopsisDanny’s tall and skinny. Even though he’s not built, his arms are long enough to give his pitch a power so fierce any college scout would sign him on the spot. A 95 mph fastball, but the boy’s not even on a team. Every time he gets up on the mound he loses it.
But at private school, they don’t expect much else from him. Danny’s brown. Half-Mexican brown. And growing up in San Diego that close to the border means everyone else knows exactly who he is before he even opens his mouth. Before they find out he can’t speak Spanish, and before they realize his mom has blonde hair and blue eyes, they’ve got him pegged.
Danny’s convinced it’s his whiteness that sent his father back to Mexico. And that’s why he’s spending the summer with his dad’s family. Only, to find himself, he might just have to face the demons he refuses to see right in front oh his face. And open up to a friendship he never saw coming.
“We are ecstatic to honor David Oyelowo,” says Festival Founder and Executive Director Heidi Durrow who calls herself an Afro-Viking because she is African-American and Danish. “We applaud the work Mr. Oyelowo has done as an artist-activist committed to social justice and for bringing heart to stories about racial and cultural connectedness in films such as A United Kingdom and Selma among others. His openness about talking about interracial families will help so many young people who are mixed and have struggled to find a place in the world, to find strength in their difference, and most importantly to connect their own struggles with the struggle for justice for all.”
Do you remember when you first started thinking about the mixed experience? Was it because of a certain moment or event? 
There were so many wonderful films that we wanted to share with you at the Festival but because of our limited programming time we were not able to.
What are you?
Why did you want to be a part of the Mixed Remixed Festival? How did you get involved?
Did you know that you can hear the oral argument before the Supreme Court of the Loving v. Virginia decision? You can find it 
Loving Day
Richard and Mildred Loving raised three children Sidney, Donald and Peggy. Scholar and write 
Chief Justice Ear Warren wrote the unanimous Loving v. Virginia. “To deny this right on so unsupportable a basis as racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment,” wrote Warren , “is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law.”
“‘No way. No way. People will think you are marrying a foreigner’ . . . He said, ‘I don’t care what people think. I’m marrying you.’ He was so persuasive. So we got married. And, actually, there was no repercussion because people knew me.”
Exploring the impact of race and culture on relationships, PG is specifically pertaining to parents that feel uncomfortable with their children being romantically involved with someone outside of their race/culture. The film ventures through different avenues of dealing with this issue, while still maintaining one’s relationship with their parents.
