Synopses & Reviews
Helena María Viramontes is a professor, scholar-activist, and renowned author of works of fiction and nonfiction. Her work has been anthologized and is read widely in the United States and abroad. For many of her readings and speaking engagements she arrives wearing a rebozo, a shawl worn by Mexican and Chicana women living on both sides of the US-Mexico border. Once, when asked about her rebozo, Viramontes explained that the pre-Columbian icon is her “security blanket,” which she embraces in order to find comfort. For her readers, her writing functions like a "rebozo de palabras,” a shawl woven with words that nurture.
As Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs points out in her insightful introduction, not only has Viramontess work not yet received the broad critical engagement it richly deserves, but there remains a monumental gap in the interpretations of Chicana literature that reach mainstream audiences. Rebozos de Palabras addresses this void by focusing on how the Chicana image has evolved through Viramontess body of work. With a foreword by Sonia Saldívar-Hull, this collection addresses Viramontes entire oeuvre through newly produced articles by major literary critics and emerging scholars who engage Viramontess writing from multiple perspectives.
Review
“Rebozos de Palabras is the perfect guide for discussing Viramontes’s incredible body of work. A number of these essays provide a sophisticated intellectual framework that allows readers to discover why she’s an essential American writer.”—Rigoberto González, editor of Camino del Sol: Fifteen Years of Latina and Latino Writing
Review
“Rebozos de Palabras is weaving a third space, nepantla, filled with memories, voices, and historias. It negotiates spaces, places, faces, and lenguas into colorful visibility and agency. Through the work of critics we become embraced within the shawl Viramontes constructs through sounds, words, voices, dialogues, and action.”—Rosalía Solórzano
Review
“This book is a major contribution to the works of Helena María Viramontes. It is organized with the intent of covering the simple, yet complex and intriguing world that surrounds Viramontes’ fiction. Gutiérrez and Muhs’ selection of articles clearly reflects the vast literary knowledge she has of Viramontes’ writings, and the intimate understanding of the social concerns that Viramontes’ fiction presents to us.”-- Jesús Rosales, Arizona State University
Synopsis
This is the first book to collect new essays written by multiple scholars that examine a Chicana or Latina author’s entire oeuvre. Focusing on the work of Helena María Viramontes, a scholar, critic, and author of both fiction and nonfiction, it also addresses the evolution of the Chicana image.
Synopsis
ContributorsMargarita T. Barceló
Mary Pat Brady
Barbara Brinson Curiel
R. Joyce Z. L. Garay
Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs
Juanita Heredia
Juan D. Mah y Busch
Aldo Ulisses Reséndiz Ramírez
José Antonio Rodríguez
Sonia Saldívar-Hull
Raelene Wyse
Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano
About the Author
Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs is an associate professor of Modern Languages and Women’s Studies at Seattle University, where she also directs the Diversity, Citizenship, and Social Justice Core Track. She has held the Wismer Professor Endowed Chair for Gender and Diversity and has served as director of the Latin American Studies Program. She is also an internationally renowned Chicana poet and cultural worker.
Table of Contents
Foreword: "Look at These Lives" vii
Sonia Saldívar-Hull
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs
I. Latin American Perspectives
1 "Had They Been Heading for the Barn All Along?":
Viramontes's Chicana Feminist Revision of Steinbeck's
Migrant Family 27
Barbara Brinson Curiel
2 Constructing Community through Fiction in
Helena María Viramontes's Their Dogs Came with
Them and Susana Sánchez Bravo's Espacios condenados 48
Raelene Wyse
II. The Body
3 Phantoms and Patch Quilt People: Narrative Art and
Migrant Collectivity in Helena María Viramontes's
Under the Feet of Jesus 67
Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano
4 The Women in East Los Angeles: Gender and the
City in Their Dogs Came with Them 97
Juanita Heredia
5 Tapestries of Space-Time: Urban and Institutional
Spaces in Helena María Viramontes's Short Fiction 122
Margarita T. Barceló
III. Ethics and Aesthetics
6 Lovingly: Ethics in Viramontes's Stories 147
Juan D. Mah y Busch
7 Metaphors to Love By: Toward a Chicana Aesthetics in
Their Dogs Came with Them 167
Mary Pat Brady
8 Crowbars, Peaches, and Sweat: Coming to Voice
through Image in Under the Feet of Jesus 192
R. Joyce Z. L. Garay
9 Our Dogs Came with Us: Viramontes Prays to Xólotl
with Digna Rabia 217
Aldo Ulisses Reséndiz Ramírez
IV. Interviews
10 Elevated Thinking, Metaphor Making, Aspired
Imagining: An Interview with Helena María Viramontes 237
Interview with Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs
11 Faith in the Imagination: An Interview with Helena
María Viramontes 251
Interview with José Antonio Rodríguez
About the Contributors 265
Index 271
Copyright © 2012. The Arizona Board of Regents.