“Can’t I Be Both?”: Biculturality, Punk, and Authenticity in Celia C. Pérez’s The First Rule of Punk

Abstract: Celia C. Pérez’s The First Rule of Punk (2017) follows María Luisa O’Neill-Morales (known as Malú) as she seeks to navigate her biracial and bicultural identity. As the child of a proudly “SuperMexican” mother and a white father, Malú is bullied by other children at her new school, who proceed to call her a “coconut” to indicate her lack of authenticity in regard to her Chicana identity. Aligning herself with other “misfit” Chicanxs, she and they form a punk band, The Co-Cos, as a vehicle to express their lived experiences as various iterations of Chicanx identity. Malú then recombines, reimagines, and rewrites conceptions of chicanidad, contesting a hegemonic sense of Mexican identity that requires adherence to “traditional” Mexican cultural forms to express authenticity. New forms of latinidad are possible in which the different registers of being Latinx and American can harmonize, build melody, and clash discordantly. These latinidades allow Latinx characters—and Latinx punks more specifically—to construct, deconstruct, and imagine new modes of self, allowing them to navigate and inhabit these conflictive spaces, creating new modes of authenticity and belonging.