Helena María Viramontes
Helena María Viramontes, born on February 26, 1954, in East Los Angeles, California, is a prominent author whose work is deeply rooted in her feminist and Chicano identities. Her writings realistically portray the struggles of women, particularly Chicanas, as they navigate issues related to identity, family, and societal expectations. Growing up in a family with limited resources, Viramontes was inspired to pursue education and received a scholarship to attend Immaculate Heart College, where she graduated in 1975.
Her literary journey began with the publication of her first collection, *The Moths and Other Stories* (1985), which examines the lives of women facing complex challenges. Viramontes has also authored novels like *Under the Feet of Jesus* (1995) and *Their Dogs Came with Them* (2007), which delve into themes of gender, economic injustice, and ethnic prejudice. Influenced by notable writers such as Gabriel García Márquez and Alice Walker, she has earned various awards, including the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature. Currently, she teaches creative writing at Cornell University and continues to contribute to Chicana literature through anthologies and workshops. Viramontes's work remains significant in addressing the intersections of race, gender, and culture within literature.
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Subject Terms
Helena María Viramontes
- Born: February 26, 1954
- Birthplace: East Los Angeles, California
Author Profile
Author. Helena María Viramontes’s work is shaped by her feminist and Chicano identities. Viramontes presents realistic portrayals of the struggles that women, particularly Chicanas, face as they attempt to grow up, raise families, and discover their identities. As a child, Viramontes attended schools in East Los Angeles with Chicano student bodies. Her parents were hardworking people—her father was a construction worker, and her mother raised nine children.
Viramontes attended Immaculate Heart College with a scholarship for underprivileged girls and graduated in 1975. After graduating, she began to send her short stories out for publication, and in 1977 one of her first stories, “Requiem for the Poor,” won first prize for fiction in a literary contest sponsored by Statement magazine of California State University, Los Angeles. Viramontes’s work continued winning awards, and in 1981 she enrolled in the creative writing program at the University of California at Irvine. Her first collection of short stories, The Moths and Other Stories, was published in 1985. Perhaps one of Viramontes’s greatest personal achievements was receiving a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1989 to attend a workshop given by at the Sundance Institute.
Viramontes’s work has been highly influenced by García Márquez, by Chicana feminist writers Ana Castillo and Sandra Cisneros, and by such black writers as Alice Walker, Ntozake Shange, and Toni Morrison. In The Moths and Other Stories, Viramontes offers her readers portrayals of women at various stages in their lives. These women face complex issues such as adolescence, sexuality, politics, family, aging, and religion and must attempt to navigate their way through problems that are often caused by the patriarchal constructs of their cultures.
Venturing into long fiction, Viramontes explores the similar intersections of gender, economic injustice, and ethnic prejudice in her debut novel, Under the Feet of Jesus (1995), about a young Mexican American migrant worker and her family. Her second novel, Their Dogs Came with Them (2007), features several young Latinas struggling with everything from homelessness to assault to family members' mental illness and is set against the sociopolitically turbulent 1960s East Los Angeles. In collaboration with Maria Herrera Sobek, Viramontes also co-edited two anthologies of Chicana literature. She teaches creative writing at Cornell University.
Viramontes has received several awards and honors for her work, including the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature in 1996, an honorary doctorate from Occidental College, Los Angeles in 2000, and the Latino Spirit Award for achievement in literature and arts from the California Latino Legislative Caucus in 2011.
In 2014, Viramontes wrote the forward for All about Skin: Short Fiction by Women of Color, a multicultural prose anthology addressing racism, prejudice, beauty standards, and family. The book features stories from twenty-seven award winning women of color.
Bibliography
Carbonell, Ana María “From Llarona to Gritona: Coatlicue in Feminist Tales by Viramontes and Cisneros.” MELUS, vol. 24, no. 2, summer 1999, pp. 53–74, doi.org/10.2307/467699. Accessed 7 Oct. 2024.
Green, Carol Hurd, and Mary Grimley Mason. American Women Writers. Continuum, 1994, pp. 463–65.
Moore, Deborah Owen. “La Llarona Dines at the Cariboo Cafe: Structure and Legend in the Works of Helena María Viramontes.” Studies in Short Fiction, vol. 35, summer 1998, pp. 277–86.
Richards, Judith. “Chicano Creativity and Criticism: New Frontiers in American Literature.” College Literature, vol. 25, spring 1998, p. 182.
SaldÍvar-Hull, Sonia. “Helena María Viramontes.” Dictionary of Literary Biography. Gale Research, 1992.
Swyt, Wendy. “Hungry Women: Borderlands Mythos in Two Stories by Helena María Viramontes.” MELUS, vol. 23, no. 2, summer 1998, pp. 189–201, doi.org/10.1093/melus/23.2.1. Accessed 7 Oct. 2024.
Viramontes, Helena María. “Why I Write: Taking the Jugular Pulse.” Alta, 21 Jun. 2024, www.altaonline.com/california-book-club/a45121772/why-i-write-helena-maria-viramontes/. Accessed 7 Oct. 2024.
Yarbo-Bejarano, Yvonne. Introduction to “The Moths and Other Stories.” Arte Público Press, 1995.