Under the Feet of Jesus

Childhood and education

Viramontes was born in East Los Angeles on February 26, 1954, to Serafin Viramontes, and Maria Louise La Brada Viramontes.[2] She was one of eight siblings in a working-class family.[3]

Viramontes graduated from Garfield High School, 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 played a significant role in her development as a writer[4] and the writing style she developed reflected her understanding and upbringing in the streets of East Los Angeles.[3] She then worked part-time while attending Immaculate Heart College,[3] from which she earned her Bachelor of Arts in English literature in 1975.[5]

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.[5] Also, while attending a graduate program in creative writing at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) in the early 1980s, “a professor told me not to write about Chicanos, but to write about people.”[5] She left the program, but returned to complete her MFA a decade later.[6] 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 for her short story "Birthday."[7] She returned to the fine arts program at UCI in 1990[5] and graduated with a Masters of Fine Arts in 1994.[4]

Viramontes' Childhood Neighborhood Was Divided by the East LA Interchange in the Early 1960s

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