Viramontes' career began in the Chicano magazine ChismeArte[8] as a literary editor.[3] 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 Chávez and the United Farm Workers on the life of her family.[9] Viramontes writing often tell stories of forgotten minority communities.[10] 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.
In 1985, Arte Público Press published The Moths, collection of short stories. Helena Maria Viramontes took a break from her work, got married and had two children.[4] 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 also 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 to attend a writing workshop with the Colombian Nobel Laureate Gabriel García Márquez. In 1995, her first novel Under the Feet of Jesus was published to critical acclaim.[11] In 2007, she published Their Dogs Came With Them, a novel that took her 17 years to complete. It was noted for its strikingly personal and realistic prose, and discusses harsh realities and social conditions of the poor.[4] The novel was 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.[12] 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 (see East LA Freeway) myth has it that the cement was poured over the resting places of some forgotten souls, their bones disturbed.
Viramontes is currently the Goldwin Smith Professor of English[1] at Cornell University.
