Helena Maria Viramontes (born February 26, 1954) is a prominent Chicana fiction writer and professor of English, and activist best known for her work within marginalized communities, particularly amongst Mexican American women and migrant workers.

She is known for her short stories, and for her two novels, Under the Feet of Jesus and Their Dogs Came With Them, and is considered one of the most significant figures in the early canon of Chicano literature.

[4] Her upbringing in East Los Angeles exposed her to the systematic inequities faced by Mexican American communities, including issues such as educational disparities, labor exploitation, and racism.

She worked part-time while attending Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles,[3] where she initially pursued journalism before turning to creative writing from which she earned her Bachelor of Arts in English literature in 1975.

Viramontes found a way to circumvent his objection and tricked him into signing a college entrance form under false pretenses.

While a grad student in the English department at Cal State L.A., Viramontes was told by a professor that she did not belong there because she was writing about Latino issues.

She left the program, but returned later to complete and earn her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of California, Irvine in 1989.

Viramontes now serves as the Goldwin Smith Professor of English at Cornell University, where she mentors emerging writers and continues to advocate for the importance of storytelling as a tool for social change.

A strong voice in Latino and Chicano literature, Helena Maria Viramontes is regarded as “one of the most socially and politically conscious writers of today.”[11] Her published works include two novels, a collection of short stories,[12] and multiple contributions to literary anthologies.

[13] She was awarded the 1995 Longwood College John Dos Passos Prize for Literature in October 1996, sealing her place in the contemporary American literary canon.

[18] Though these writings are not readily accessible to the public, the University of California Santa Barbara carries them within the special collection archive.

[18] Viramontes's work is largely set in California,[19] and grapples with social, political, and environmental elements that impact Hispanic and Chicano Americans.

Published in 1995, Viramontes' first novel, titled Under the Feet of Jesus,[20] follows Estrella, a thirteen-year-old girl at the crossroads of childhood and womanhood.

The novel focuses on Estrella as she navigates life working in the fields harvesting produce in southwestern United States, aids her mother care for and teach her siblings how to survive, and explores new emotions and desires with Alejo, a young farm worker.

Against the backdrop of California[19] landscapes, this novel provides a moving look into the life of the Hispanic family, facing abandonment by their father, prejudice from the people surrounding them, and an unrelenting land that may kill them.

This novel caused well-renowned Latina author Julia Alvarez to call Viramontes "one of the important multicultural voices of American literature.

It reflects, as critics Carballo and Giles have noted, multiple "initiation stories," many of which revolve around the friendship and love unfolding between Estrella and Alejo.

The chapter draws the personalities of the main characters on emotional, spiritual, and physical levels; we learn of the hardships that they experience as migrant workers.

Blood, aching backs, feet, hands, eyes, all mentioned frequently, remind readers how much human life is housed in a body which must stay safe and healthy in order to live.

"[28] The juxtaposition of Petra, carrying her child, and her daughter's figure silhouetted against the sky at the novel's close emphasizes Viramontes' chicana feminism.

Similarly, Pattison suggests that people in urban communities are deprived of their political connections to the space and erasure of memory sites.

[30] Viramontes’ novel showcases the 1960s freeway construction in East Los Angeles in which Mexican American sites of cultural memory were permanently erased.

In the novel Viramontes focuses on the Chicano movement that the young characters joined during a time in which the freeway threatened the erasure of their community and culture.

[32] She maps the lives of four Latinas who navigate personal and political unrest with their communities while emphasizing how Chicanas and queer-Latinas have been an integral part of Chicana/o history.