Marcus Vega Doesn’t Speak Spanish, first published by Viking in 2018, is the second novel by award-winning author Pablo Cartaya. This middle-grade novel won the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) notable book of the year award. In 2018, Cartaya also won the Pura Belpré Author Honor for his first novel, The Epic Fail of Arturo Zamora. His middle-grade novel Each Tiny Spark was awarded the 2020 Schneider Family Book Award Honor. Cartaya is an actor, speaker, and educator who has worked with Disney, Apple+, and Sesame Street on adaptations of their film and television projects. He holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is on the faculty of the MLA in Creative Writing at University of Nevada, Reno. Cartaya identifies as Cuban American and lives in Miami.

Content Warning: The book includes a character who uses a slur toward a character who has Down syndrome.

Plot Summary

Marcus Vega is a biracial 14-year-old boy who goes to Montgomery Middle School in a suburb of Philadelphia. He lives with his mother, Melissa, and his younger brother, Charlie, who is 12 and has Down syndrome. Marcus’s father, who is Puerto Rican, left Melissa and the boys 10 years ago. Charlie is friendly and gregarious, while Marcus, who is big for his age, is self-conscious and quiet. Marcus is creative and uses his size to his advantage. He runs several businesses at his school. For example, for a small fee, he walks children to and from school, helping them avoid the school bully, Stephen Hobert. He also enforces the no-cell-phones and no-littering rules by fining students he catches breaking them. Marcus is a devoted brother to Charlie, picking him up after school, getting his dinner, and putting him to bed if their mother comes home late from work, which happens often.

Stephen enjoys baiting Marcus. One day, he calls Charlie and Danny—one of the students Marcus chaperones—“the R word” (43), just loudly enough for Marcus and Danny to hear him. Marcus punches Stephen in the face, which lands Marcus in suspension and may lead to his expulsion. The principal wants to wait until after spring break to make a final decision and encourages a furious Melissa to enroll Charlie in a school for students with disabilities, fearing that Marcus is becoming too distracted at school by his need to protect his brother. Even though Melissa is struggling financially, she plans a much-needed trip to Puerto Rico to allow the family to regroup.

The spring break trip becomes an eye-opening adventure for Charlie, Marcus, and Melissa. They reconnect with their Puerto Rican family members, most of whom have never met Marcus and Charlie, and—at the insistence of Marcus—they go on a hunt for his father. Danny lends Marcus a camera for the vacation, and Marcus documents the entire trip. He and Charlie learn about Puerto Rican culture and experience the local way of life through a series of misadventures with their newfound family and friends as they search for their father. Eventually, they find him; he gave up his plans of starting a farm or running tours of chinchorros—local restaurants—to sell time-shares at an exclusive hotel. He demonstrates minimal interest in Marcus and Charlie. After his father tries to sell Melissa a time-share, Marcus sees him in a different light: Marcus is no longer interested in reconnecting with him and understands that his mother is the hero of the family. Marcus and Charlie embrace their Puerto Rican identity and return home with a different perspective, feeling connected to a culture beyond their household.

Back at school, Marcus learns that over the break, most students—and many parents—signed a petition that Danny created opposing Marcus’s expulsion. Marcus realizes that what he previously interpreted as fear of him was probably just children hurrying to their classes. He starts to make friends and redefines his self-image, viewing himself as Marcus Vega, photographer and regular kid, not “big, bad, Marcus Vega” (83). Marcus continues to walk children to school, but now he does it because he enjoys their company, not to earn money.