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.
Do you remember when you first started thinking about the mixed experience? Was it because of a certain moment or event? 
What are you?
Being surrounded by many cultures was the norm but also a very confusing experience. It was hard to find my voice because I never felt I was enough — never Chinese, native, or Dutch-Indonesian enough. Because I never felt like I belonged to any community, I sought to learn the stories of my heritage and connect them together to rediscover my own. The first mediums I felt gave me a voice was music and film.
Loving Day
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.”
Crystal
Elizabeth Hudson is a native New Yorker who has lived all over the world in pursuit of her medical education. She proudly identifies as a mixed race woman and has come to embrace the unique experience of being ethnically ambiguous. She is local physician who specializes in the care of Infectious Diseases, with an emphasis on HIV care. Elizabeth lives in Los Angeles with her husband and son. 
