Helena María Viramontes: social and political perspectives of a Chicana writer

Abstract

Helena MarÃ-a Viramontes: social and political perspectives of a Chicana writer Helena MarÃ-a Viramontes is one of the most socially and politically conscious writers of today and these concerns permeate her work. Viramontes is also clearly a feminist writer, joining ranks with other Third World women writers. She recognizes the common ground of the colonized experience of many Third World countries as well as those marginalized groups in the United States and the often silenced struggles of many women against the dominating patriarchy. In this manner, we can see some of Viramontes' stories, such as "The Moths" or "Growing," revolving around young girls reaching womanhood and discovering the paternal restrictions imposed upon them due to their sex. Other women are forced to resist the demands or violence placed on them by their husbands such as in "The Broken Web," "Birthday " or "The Long Reconciliation." Her women, both young and old, are characters who rebel, but are fraught with contradictory blends of weaknesses and strengths, fighting against their unfulfilled potential, their selfless lives of giving to others, tensions in the domestic sphere and performing apparently small, but heroic acts of resistance. Viramontes often chooses the myth of La Llorona as a link to a web of the international community of women who frequently can do no more than wail, cry for those children they have lost to wars, whether abroad or in the barrios , to immigration and deportation, to drugs, to abortion , to discrimination and humiliation. In stories such as "Snapshots" or "The Jumping Bean" she often contrasts the ideals of the middle-class woman with the impossibilArizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Volume 5, 2001 224 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies ity of the working class woman, who only asks for day to day survival, and maybe, a "toilet" of her own. But at the same time, many of her stories center on women fighting and resisting against other social injustices such as issues of immigration, racism, undocumented workers , class distinctions, and ecological concerns. The struggle of these women is not only their own, but that of their class or community. In her first novel Under the Feet of Jesus, adolescent Estrella wakes to the issues of pesticides and their effects on the downtrodden migrant workers. "The Cariboo Café" centers on displaced persons, a blurring of national and geographical borders leaving only the marginalized people who suffer the police antiimmigrant racism. Helena Maria Viramontes continues in her recent work with similar issues. In her second novel, currently being reviewed for publication, Their Dogs Came With Them, the Chicano Movement and social injustices remain a prime concern. She is also working on a collection of short stories, Paris Rats in East L.A., based on the life of Modesta Avila, a California woman who fought to defend her property rights against railroad encroachment in the 1890s. Viramontes, personally and through her characters, identifies with all the downtrodden people of the world, in particular with women and has committed her energies to endowing them with a voice so they will be heard. Helena Maria Viramontes is currently an Associate Professor in the Creative Writing program of the English Department of Cornell University. She has previously taught at Antioch College and California State and participated in numerous writing programs and workshops, among them the Sundance Institute under the direction of Gabriel Garcia Márquez, the Breadloaf Conference and many Latino workshops. She obtained her M.EA. in Creative Writing from the University of California, Irvine and was awarded the John Dos Passos Literary Award in 1996. She devotes much of her time to community projects, scholarly work, having co-edited a number of books, acting as literary editor for several journals and projects and lecturing and reading from her work all over the United States and Europe. Many of her stories and essays on writing have been reprinted repeatedly in diverse anthologies, among which are several from distinguished publishing houses such as Norton, Longman, St. Martin's, Oxford, Gale, Simon & Shuster, Harper Collins, Harcourt Brace and Houghton Mifflin. Her creative books are The Moths and Other Stories (1985, 1995) and Under the Feet of Jesus (1995) other than the two...