When I first read the title of the book “Yaqui Delgado wants to kick your ass” I thought it would be about ninjas or fighting crime. Instead, it’s about a girl who lives in Queens, NY and is in her sophomore year of high school getting bullied. Piddy, is a girl who lives with her mother, Clara. Piddy doesn’t have much family other than her mother, but her mother has a close friend, Lila. Lila is pretty much an aunt/older sister figure to Piddy. Piddy starts a new school: Daniel Jones High School, and her best friend, Mitzi moves to Long Island. Not the best way to start a new school year. Piddy takes it in stride and goes to school, a girl from her class, Darlene comes up to Piddy and tell her “Yaqui Delgado wants to kick you ass”. Obviously not the first thing you want to hear in the morning before school. Piddy has no idea what’s going on, who Yaqui is, why Yaqui hates her, or why she wants to fight Piddy. Piddy wants to know who Yaqui Delgado is, so she goes to the library and gets a yearbook from the previous year, and while she is in her English class, she looks up Yaqui in the yearbook. She doesn’t think she has seen her before, which confuses Piddy even more than before. Piddy goes to lunch, she sits with the smart kids, while she’s at the table a carton of chocolate milk is thrown at the wall and explodes, and gets over all the students sitting at Piddy’s table. Piddy looks over at where the Latin kids sit and recognizes Yaqui standing and looking over at the table where the milk exploded, instantly realizing that Yaqui is the reason for the milk exploding. This incident starts the beginning of the book, and also what seems to start the beginning to more bullying.

As a girl who is now 23 years old, I believe I have experienced my fair share of bullying, and finding out people who don’t like me that I have never met before. For girls especially I think, this is a common thing. Even I think I’ve done it: not liked someone for any particular reason, just didn’t like them, just because. Which makes me relate to Yaqui in some weird way. Now that I am I older I don’t find myself doing that any longer, but in high school I think it was something I could relate to. Granted I never acted on it but still. Maybe Yaqui felt threatened. Who knows. Usually, when someone is bullying others, there is some motive behind it.