Helena Maria Viramontes
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
fiction
Fiction
Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...
writer and professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
of English
English studies
English studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language , English linguistics English studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language (including literatures from the U.K., U.S.,...
.
Childhood and education
Viramontes was born into a Mexican-American family.Viramontes graduated from Garfield High School, which was one of the high schools that participated in the 1968 Chicano Blowouts, a series of protests against unequal conditions in East Los Angeles public schools. The Chicano Movement
Chicano Movement
The Chicano Movement of the 1960s, also called the Chicano Civil Rights Movement, also known as El Movimiento, is an extension of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement which began in the 1940s with the stated goal of achieving Mexican American empowerment.-Origins:The Chicano Movement...
would play a significant role in her development as a writer. She then worked part-time while attending Immaculate Heart College
Immaculate Heart College
Immaculate Heart College was a private, Catholic college located in Los Angeles, California.The college was established in 1916 by the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary ten years after they had founded Immaculate Heart High School on the property....
, from which she earned her Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
in English literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
in 1975.
Viramontes attended the graduate program in creative writing at the University of California, Irvine
University of California, Irvine
The University of California, Irvine , founded in 1965, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California, located in Irvine, California, USA...
. In 1977, her short story "Requiem for the Poor" was awarded a prize from Statement Magazine. In 1979, she won a literary prize from the Spanish department at UC Irvine. In 1981, she left the MFA program. In 1985, Arte Público Press
Arte Público Press
Arte Público Press, in Houston, Texas, is the largest US publisher of contemporary and recovered literature by US Hispanic authors, part of the University of Houston. It publishes approximately 30 titles per year....
published The Moths, collection of short stories. During her hiatus from academia she published in many underground literary journals such as ChismeArte. In 1988, she co-edited Chicana Creativity and Criticism with María Herrera-Sobek, a volume dedicated to the literary output of Mexican-American women. She returned to UC Irvine to complete her MFA, which was awarded in 1994. As part of the program, she received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
to attend a writing workshop with the Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
n Nobel Laureate Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel José de la Concordia García Márquez is a Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist, known affectionately as Gabo throughout Latin America. He is considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in...
. In 1995, her first novel Under the Feet of Jesus was published to critical acclaim.
Recently, Their Dogs Came With Them, a novel that took her 17 years to complete, has been published and is gaining notoriety for its tough characters and strikingly personal and realistic prose. This novel is largely inspired by her childhood in the midst of East Los Angeles, with the gang conflicts and social strife at the center of her novel. She has said that her house is next to four cemeteries, and that when the freeways were built in East Los Angeles in the 1960s, myth has it that the cement was poured over the resting places of some forgotten souls; their bones disturbed. She had been spurred to write the novel because of her passion not to let these souls be forgotten, while at the same time telling a beautifully woven work on life.
Professional career
Her short stories have been published in a variety of literary journals. The major themes of her stories are informed by her childhood experiences in East Los Angeles, and the impact of César ChávezCésar Chávez
César Estrada Chávez was an American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist who, with Dolores Huerta, co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers ....
and the United Farm Workers
United Farm Workers
The United Farm Workers of America is a labor union created from the merging of two groups, the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee led by Filipino organizer Larry Itliong, and the National Farm Workers Association led by César Chávez...
on the life of her family. Many of her works feature strong female characters, and child protagonists figure prominently into her work. Other works have been deemed "democratic novels", in that no single protagonist dominates the storyline. Throughout all of her work, a love of life and of all of humanity pervades, despite poverty and the other challenges her characters face.
Viramontes is a currently a professor of English at Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
.
Helena Maria Viramontes was named a 2007 USA Ford Fellow by United States Artists
United States Artists
United States Artists is an independent nonprofit and nongovernmental philanthropic organization based in Los Angeles, California and dedicated to supporting the work of living American artists by the granting of cash awards, called USA Fellowships...
, an arts advocacy foundation dedicated to the support and promotion of America's top living artists. That same year, she received the AAHHE's Outstanding Latino/a Cultural Award in Literary Arts or Publications
Outstanding Latino/a Cultural Award in Literary Arts or Publications
The Outstanding Latino/a Cultural Award in Literary Arts or Publications is one of several awards presented by the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education, Inc. ; it also sponsored by AT&T...
.
Publications
- Cuentos: Stories by Latinas (Contributor, 1983). ISBN 0-913175-01-3
- The Moths and Other StoriesThe Moth (Short Story)“The Moths” is a short story written by Helena Maria Viramontes. It was first published in 1985 in Viramontes’ first book, The Moths and Other Short Stories, by Arte Publico Press in Houston, Texas.-Plot Summary:...
(1985). ISBN 1-55885-138-0 - Beyond Stereotypes: A Critical Analysis of Chicana Literature (Contributor, 1985). ISBN 0-916950-54-9
- Chicana Creativity and Criticism (Contributor and editor, 1988) ISBN 0-8263-1712-X
- Under the Feet of Jesus (1995) ISBN 0-452-27387-0
- Their Dogs Came with ThemTheir Dogs Came with ThemTheir Dogs Came With Them is a novel by Helena Maria Viramontes. Viramontes was born in East Los Angeles, California, into a Mexican American family. She attended Garfield High School and later Immaculate Heart College where she earned her BA in English Literature. During her time in school,...
(2007). ISBN 0-7432-8766-5