The First Rule of Punk

Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2017

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-11

Chapters 12-17

Chapters 18-22

Chapters 23-28

Chapters 29-32

Chapters 33-39

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 18-22Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 18 Summary

Malú goes over to Joe’s house for band practice, having told her mom she’s going there to work on a school project. Benny and Ellie are already there. Malú has obtained 27 of the 30 signatures for Ellie’s petition; Ellie, while offering she has no musical ability, has brought her own drumsticks to practice. Malú puts on a song by The Ramones, but Ellie is skeptical of her ability to duplicate the drumbeat. Malú asks Joe’s mom for help; Joe, in turn, asks Malú to ask his mom herself. Malú heads back upstairs from the basement. Mrs. Hidalgo is making Mexican wedding cookies to sell at the coffee shop. Malú helps her finish making the cookies while taking furtive glances at Mrs. Hidalgo’s tattoos. On one arm, Mrs. Hidalgo has “a cluster of pink and orange flowers that looked like balls of tiny petals” (157). On the other arm, there’s a tattoo:

[It’s of] a girl [who] looked like Pippi Longstocking, except she had black braids sticking up on either side of her head. Instead of Pippi’s white freckled face, the tattoo girl’s face was brown and round with thick lips and a wide nose. She sort of resembled one of those huge stone Olmec heads. She wore striped socks like Pippi and what looked like an embroidered Mexican dress (157).

Mrs. Hidalgo calls the tattoo “la Pippi” (157). She goes on to explain that when she was young, she went as Pippi Longstocking for one Halloween. A friend laughed at her for dressing as Pippi, as “Pippi is white” and Mrs. Hidalgo is not. Hidalgo drew the tattoo while in college: “It’s Pippi with a Mexican twist. To remind me that I shouldn’t let others decide who I can be” (158).

Mrs. Hidalgo helps Joe, Benny, and Ellie learn the different parts of The Ramones’ song “Blitzkrieg Bop”; meanwhile, Malú alters some of the more “objectionable” parts of the lyrics and renames the song “Back to School Bop” (160). Ellie turns out to be a natural at the drums, learning quickly. Practice ends, and Malú goes through the Hidalgos’ collection of records. Mrs. Hidalgo has Malú listen to a 1980s’ punk band called The Brat. Malú loves it, so Mrs. Hidalgo offers to make Malú a mix. The band is set to practice again the following night.

Chapter 19 Summary

Malú and her mom head to their dance lesson at the Ramirez Dance Studio, which is “in a huge warehouse-type building that also housed other businesses” (166). On the studio door, and below the name of the business, stenciled words read “TEACHING MEXICAN FOLKLORIC DANCE SINCE 1998” (166). In the studio are Selena, her mom, and her brother. Malú changes into shoes appropriate for dancing. She regards several awards that Selena has won for her dancing prowess. Malú and her mom watch Selena and her brother dance then try dancing themselves. Malú feels she does a poor job. While her mom loves the lesson, Malú does not.

Mrs. Ramirez gets Malú’s mom a brochure, as Malú’s mom is interested in more classes (Malú is decidedly not, and her mom doesn’t push it). Malú goes to change out of her dance shoes and overhears Selena and Selena’s mom talking. Selena wants to try Irish dancing; her mom is skeptical and tells her no. Selena throws the brochure for the Irish dance class in the trash can, but Malú fishes it out and saves it. She then teases Selena, in a furtive manner, about not being able to take the class, after Selena teases her.

Chapter 20 Summary

In this three-page chapter, the day for auditions for the Fall Fiesta talent show arrives. Malú says that “everything seemed to go wrong” (173). Joe forgets his guitar cord in his locker, and Joe, Benny, and Ellie can’t seem to sync up once they start playing. At first, Malú is unable to sing. When she finally does, she is “croaking out the lyrics” (174). Things improve halfway through the performance. Principal Jackson says he’ll let the band know. Joe says everyone gets to play in the talent show, and that the auditions are a mere formality.

Chapter 21 Summary

Malú’s band is left out of the talent show. Malú goes to Mr. Jackson, the art teacher, to ask him why. Jackson offers that it’s the 30th anniversary of the school and that for the talent show, it’s vital that the school “feature more traditional acts” (177).

Malú meets up with Joe, Benny, and Ellie in the library. Malú wants to quit because of what she and the others see as discrimination toward loud punk music; the other band members think otherwise. Malú calls her dad that night, admitting she’s not told her mom about the band. She also lies, telling him that the Co-Co’s are indeed playing the talent show. After the call, Malú puts on the Lola Beltrán CD she’s borrowed from Oralia. Malú looks online for videos of Beltrán and is entranced by the singer, finding her to be very punk, even though Beltrán doesn’t play punk music.

Chapter 22 Summary

Malú and her mom go over to Oralia’s apartment for Sunday dinner. Joe and his parents are also there. The food Oralia makes is too spicy for Malú. After dinner, Mrs. Hidalgo serves vegan tres leches cake. Oralia is skeptical and says that her daughter, Mrs. Hidalgo, has always needed to be different. Malú’s mom echoes this sentiment in regard to Malú. Mrs. Hidalgo recounts organizing an anti-homecoming dance to protest the fact that not all the students at her school could afford suits or dresses for the event. It was held off campus grounds. This will be what sparks Malú’s idea for getting the Co-Co’s to play Fall Fiesta, despite not making the talent show. Malú tells Joe there’s to be a band meeting at Calaca after school the next day.

Chapters 18-22 Analysis

Punk rock and Mexican heritage butt heads in these chapters. The band plays a PG-rated version of a Ramones song for their audition, which goes badly. Nonetheless, Joe assures Malú the audition is a formality, and all acts will get to perform at the Fall Fiesta. This, however, turns out to not be the case: The Co-Co’s are left out of the performance. Inherent in their omission is that punk music has no place in traditional Mexican and Mexican American artistic expression, a notion that Pérez will spend much of the rest of the book refuting.

This refutation can be seen most clearly through the character of Mrs. Hidalgo, who is Joe’s mom and Oralia’s daughter. In Ana Hidalgo, both Malú and the reader can see Mexican culture and punk culture synthesized and personified. Mrs. Hidalgo has a tattoo—tattoos are a staple of punk culture—of flowers that are likely dahlias, the national flower of Mexico. She bakes traditional Mexican pastries but also listens to lots of punk music, and there are many punk bands comprising the shop’s wall of fame. Further, it’s through Mrs. Hidalgo that Malú gets the idea for the Alterna-Fiesta. Mrs. Hidalgo recounts a story from her youth where she protested prom because many Mexican American students couldn’t afford to dress up, hosting a clandestine, alternative party in someone’s garage. Señora Oralia, Ana Hidalgo’s mother, speaks to her daughter’s need to consistently be different. At a moment where Malú is not close to her own mother, she finds a surrogate in Mrs. Hidalgo, and sees in the woman a way to begin to meld her own Mexican heritage with punk.

Another important moment in this grouping of chapters occurs at the Ramirez Dance Studio, when Selena’s mom says no to Selena wanting to take Irish dance classes. Selena shows her mom a flyer for the classes and her mother flatly refuses. This disallowance functions in many ways as the inverse of where Malú finds herself at, in regard to balancing her Mexican heritage and her love of punk. Selena, steeped in traditional Mexican culture, seeks to expand her horizons, while Malú has spent much of the novel avoiding her Mexican background in favor of all things punk. The flyer that Malú removes from the trash and saves will function, toward the end of the novel, as a through-line for something at least approaching a reconciliation between Selena and Malú.