Helena Maria Viramontes
Nickname: Elenita Bonita aka Helen
“My father use to call me Elenita Bonita and my mother use to call me
Helen so when I started publishing I put the two together, that’s why Elena
is spelled with an H.”
Born: 1954
“The year that Frida Kahlo died.”
Birth Place: East Los Angeles
“I do remember when there were not any freeways in East Los Angeles,
and one of the first major interchanges… of course they build it in East Los
Angeles and it really destroyed a lot of the city. It was the freeway that cut
us off so that East LA became an island onto itself. So the Chicanos and
Chicanas there got so isolated that the escalation of gang violence went
sky high during the time I was growing up.”
Nickname: Elenita Bonita aka Helen
“My father use to call me Elenita Bonita and my mother use to call me
Helen so when I started publishing I put the two together, that’s why Elena
is spelled with an H.”
Born: 1954
“The year that Frida Kahlo died.”
Birth Place: East Los Angeles
“I do remember when there were not any freeways in East Los Angeles,
and one of the first major interchanges… of course they build it in East Los
Angeles and it really destroyed a lot of the city. It was the freeway that cut
us off so that East LA became an island onto itself. So the Chicanos and
Chicanas there got so isolated that the escalation of gang violence went
sky high during the time I was growing up.”
| Interview questions/responses with Chicana author/professor, Helena Maria Viramontes. A part of this interview focuses on the anthologized story titled "The Moths". Interview questions were created and transcribed by Lee. |
1st Job:
“Picking grapes. I was a grape picker,
piscadora. Very young, I come from a real
big family, there is eleven of us together
and during the summer my father would put
us in the back of a truck and drive us to
Easton which is right next to Fresno and we
spent the summer picking grapes. It would
be all of us including my Mom.”
Schools Attended:
Elementary School
“I went to Mariana Elementary, 3 or 4 blocks
from our house right across from the Long
Beach freeway. It was 99.9% Chicano. I
write about my years here in my second
novel and about being madly in love with
one of the Black teachers in Elementary
School, who took care of us. She would
bring corn flakes and milk and we thought it
was the greatest thing. Now thinking back,
of course, a lot of the kids didn’t come with
breakfast. She was so in tuned.”
Junior High School
“I went to Belvedere Junior High School. It is
still there, it looks like a prison now, high
fence, barbed wire kind of thing. It is a
pretty rough school. This is where things
started getting kind of iffy. It is Anthony
Quinn’s Alma Matter... he went there. Right
across from there they named a public
library after him and it would’ve been nice
had he donated some money to the library
that’s about the size of a living room."
"I almost dropped out in middle school in
the 8th grade. Middle school was really
rough for me and both my sister and I
decided that we didn’t want to go to school.
And you know we were in a pretty rough
situation with these gangs or whatever.
And my mother was very smart. Especially
cause my older sister was beginning to get
into trouble and she said, "look you don’t
want to go to school then fine, stay here,
cause I’m not gonna send you out if you're
not gonna be in school but in the streets."
And what we did was clean house. After a
while I told myself I don’t want to do this for
the rest of my life and I go went back to
school and it was very hard. Teachers
didn't care for you, they just felt that you
were a truant student. There was several of
times that I felt humiliated cause I didn’t
have my books, was way behind. And my
sister eventually ended up dropping out.
And if it wasn’t for drama, I got into drama I
think it was the latter part of my 8th grade
when I returned and that really saved me.
We had a group of kids that just like to fool
around on stage and perform and we had a
very dedicated white teacher who I was
madly in love with, a wonderful individual.
This is why I like to talk to teachers because
I can count on one hand the teachers who
influenced me and they made such a big
difference in my life. Teachers are out in
the trenches, they get paid crap, they get
very little respect. The amount of incredible
energy it takes to teach and to care about
students and then have their own lives is
amazing. And this country does not respect
this I think, and you know, they do change
peoples lives and they changed mine.”
High School
“Garfield High is the same high school that
they filmed for Stand and Deliver. All three
of the schools I attended were 99.9%
Chicano... my interaction with gringos only
happened with police which terrified us
because police were very brutal...and then
some of my teachers...they were always in
positions of authority that made me feel
humiliated or very terrified. Garfield by then
was a big massive warehouse of students.
They had a program at the time, because
they were so overpopulated where you can
graduate in two years rather than three, so I
did. I had just turned 17 in February,
graduated in June and that kind of freaked
me out cause I was thinking, "what am I
gonna do with my life." I don’t know how to
type and that’s when I decided that maybe I
should go to college."
College
"I applied to three colleges cause I had no
idea what I was doing. I applied to Barnard
because a Chicana from Barnard came to
Garfield and spoke to us about the school,
sort of like recruiting. And I thought New
York... New York for me was like Paris, it
seemed so far away and exotic, romantic,
so I said yeah I’ll do that. And I applied to
Oxidental cause some of my friends were
applying there and then I applied to this
small four year liberal arts Catholic college,
Emaculate Heart College. And Barnard
didn’t accept me and Oxidental put me on
the waiting list which meant they didn’t
accept me either. Immaculate Heart
College was an incredible school. Some of
the nuns were pushed out of the church for
their radicalism...they were very radical
feminist nuns and they taught us to be
citizens of the world. They gave us a lot of
things to think about. Our future. I took
classes on abortion, test tube babies, and
this was back in 1972. They taught us how
to be critical thinkers. They were incredible
teachers. When I first dropped in from
Garfield I hadn’t realized how much I had
not known and how much I had not
acquired any skills in reading closely, doing
term papers, speaking out my opinions. It
was so difficult the first year to be in a
college where that’s all they wanted you to
do. I didn’t feel that I was stupid, so I knew
if I didn’t know what they were talking about,
I would jot down notes, subjects and then I
would go upstairs and spend a day reading
about it. That is the most important thing,
read, read, read. If I read I knew I could
acquire the same education that these
people had. And I did.”
“Picking grapes. I was a grape picker,
piscadora. Very young, I come from a real
big family, there is eleven of us together
and during the summer my father would put
us in the back of a truck and drive us to
Easton which is right next to Fresno and we
spent the summer picking grapes. It would
be all of us including my Mom.”
Schools Attended:
Elementary School
“I went to Mariana Elementary, 3 or 4 blocks
from our house right across from the Long
Beach freeway. It was 99.9% Chicano. I
write about my years here in my second
novel and about being madly in love with
one of the Black teachers in Elementary
School, who took care of us. She would
bring corn flakes and milk and we thought it
was the greatest thing. Now thinking back,
of course, a lot of the kids didn’t come with
breakfast. She was so in tuned.”
Junior High School
“I went to Belvedere Junior High School. It is
still there, it looks like a prison now, high
fence, barbed wire kind of thing. It is a
pretty rough school. This is where things
started getting kind of iffy. It is Anthony
Quinn’s Alma Matter... he went there. Right
across from there they named a public
library after him and it would’ve been nice
had he donated some money to the library
that’s about the size of a living room."
"I almost dropped out in middle school in
the 8th grade. Middle school was really
rough for me and both my sister and I
decided that we didn’t want to go to school.
And you know we were in a pretty rough
situation with these gangs or whatever.
And my mother was very smart. Especially
cause my older sister was beginning to get
into trouble and she said, "look you don’t
want to go to school then fine, stay here,
cause I’m not gonna send you out if you're
not gonna be in school but in the streets."
And what we did was clean house. After a
while I told myself I don’t want to do this for
the rest of my life and I go went back to
school and it was very hard. Teachers
didn't care for you, they just felt that you
were a truant student. There was several of
times that I felt humiliated cause I didn’t
have my books, was way behind. And my
sister eventually ended up dropping out.
And if it wasn’t for drama, I got into drama I
think it was the latter part of my 8th grade
when I returned and that really saved me.
We had a group of kids that just like to fool
around on stage and perform and we had a
very dedicated white teacher who I was
madly in love with, a wonderful individual.
This is why I like to talk to teachers because
I can count on one hand the teachers who
influenced me and they made such a big
difference in my life. Teachers are out in
the trenches, they get paid crap, they get
very little respect. The amount of incredible
energy it takes to teach and to care about
students and then have their own lives is
amazing. And this country does not respect
this I think, and you know, they do change
peoples lives and they changed mine.”
High School
“Garfield High is the same high school that
they filmed for Stand and Deliver. All three
of the schools I attended were 99.9%
Chicano... my interaction with gringos only
happened with police which terrified us
because police were very brutal...and then
some of my teachers...they were always in
positions of authority that made me feel
humiliated or very terrified. Garfield by then
was a big massive warehouse of students.
They had a program at the time, because
they were so overpopulated where you can
graduate in two years rather than three, so I
did. I had just turned 17 in February,
graduated in June and that kind of freaked
me out cause I was thinking, "what am I
gonna do with my life." I don’t know how to
type and that’s when I decided that maybe I
should go to college."
College
"I applied to three colleges cause I had no
idea what I was doing. I applied to Barnard
because a Chicana from Barnard came to
Garfield and spoke to us about the school,
sort of like recruiting. And I thought New
York... New York for me was like Paris, it
seemed so far away and exotic, romantic,
so I said yeah I’ll do that. And I applied to
Oxidental cause some of my friends were
applying there and then I applied to this
small four year liberal arts Catholic college,
Emaculate Heart College. And Barnard
didn’t accept me and Oxidental put me on
the waiting list which meant they didn’t
accept me either. Immaculate Heart
College was an incredible school. Some of
the nuns were pushed out of the church for
their radicalism...they were very radical
feminist nuns and they taught us to be
citizens of the world. They gave us a lot of
things to think about. Our future. I took
classes on abortion, test tube babies, and
this was back in 1972. They taught us how
to be critical thinkers. They were incredible
teachers. When I first dropped in from
Garfield I hadn’t realized how much I had
not known and how much I had not
acquired any skills in reading closely, doing
term papers, speaking out my opinions. It
was so difficult the first year to be in a
college where that’s all they wanted you to
do. I didn’t feel that I was stupid, so I knew
if I didn’t know what they were talking about,
I would jot down notes, subjects and then I
would go upstairs and spend a day reading
about it. That is the most important thing,
read, read, read. If I read I knew I could
acquire the same education that these
people had. And I did.”
The Moths:
“Tey Diana Rebolledo, I’m forever grateful of her for always being
supportive of Chicana literary text. The Moths first appeared in an
anthology that I edited, I was literary editor of an anthology that we did
back in the late 70’s. It was called 201, Homenaje A La Ciudad De Los
Angeles….Because it was… I think the centennial of the city of Los
Angeles, there was all these celebrations happening, but of course,
there were all these celebrations that excluded East Los Angeles. They
always think of this particular section of Los Angeles as being invisible,
basically a phantom limb of the city. Victor Manuel Vaje who was a
visionary man, and is a poet, decided that he was not going to allow
that to happen so he organized a group of us to get this Homenaje
together to force our existence into the consciousness of the rest of the
city. The Moth’s was first published there and then after that I included
it in the Infinite Divisions section. Till this day it is still being
anthologized. It is approximately in 40 to 50 anthologies. It has been
taught in medical schools, sociology classes on how to care for old
people, its been taught in art classes, of course in literature classes,
writing classes, Chicano(a) literature classes, Women studies
classes, all these different places.”
“Tey Diana Rebolledo, I’m forever grateful of her for always being
supportive of Chicana literary text. The Moths first appeared in an
anthology that I edited, I was literary editor of an anthology that we did
back in the late 70’s. It was called 201, Homenaje A La Ciudad De Los
Angeles….Because it was… I think the centennial of the city of Los
Angeles, there was all these celebrations happening, but of course,
there were all these celebrations that excluded East Los Angeles. They
always think of this particular section of Los Angeles as being invisible,
basically a phantom limb of the city. Victor Manuel Vaje who was a
visionary man, and is a poet, decided that he was not going to allow
that to happen so he organized a group of us to get this Homenaje
together to force our existence into the consciousness of the rest of the
city. The Moth’s was first published there and then after that I included
it in the Infinite Divisions section. Till this day it is still being
anthologized. It is approximately in 40 to 50 anthologies. It has been
taught in medical schools, sociology classes on how to care for old
people, its been taught in art classes, of course in literature classes,
writing classes, Chicano(a) literature classes, Women studies
classes, all these different places.”
Interview questions about The Moths:
Why did the narrator never kiss the grandmother?
"There is a detachment that she feels from herself, even with her bull
hands, there is a detachment there. She sees herself in fragments.
This whole idea of identity, especially in adolescents...their identity is
shattered, they don’t know who they are. This unnamed narrator, who
is 14, does not know what love is. She might have an inkling to know
what love isn’t. She feels great affection for her grandmother but she
doesn’t know how deep and profound that affection and love is. She
see’s her grandmother as someone who she can have an escape in,
to feel normal, or to have a sense of freedom. All these things that she
doesn’t have at home or in the church."
In regards to the chapel why did she never return?
“There was no redemption or salvation for her there. The idea of
church brought only sadness and frustration. It brought a sense of
repression, and that repression is felt when her father is forcing her to
do something, or forcing religion down her throat. There is no
mysticism or mystery or sacredness at the church. The sacredness
that she feels and appreciates though she does not know it as that.... it
is when she goes to her grandmother’s house and she helps her
grandmother with the garden and there is a sacredness there that she
has yet to name. But she knows what it isn’t... and it isn’t in the
church.”
How do you feel about the scars on the grandmother’s back?
“I don’t know where those scars come from. I don’t know what
happened to her grandmother. What I think the narrator is looking at
though is the fact that there is always so much hidden in terms of
history that we don’t know anything about. Not until we go out and
seek it, and find it, uncover it, unbury it are we able to see that we are
missing something from our history. I don’t really have an answer for
the question.”
What do the moths symbolize?
"The Moths" has been in print for 20 years. It is still being
anthologized. It is something that resonates and its something that
students are constantly being asked. Are the moth’s real and what is
the symbolism of the moths? And I don’t have an answer for that. I’m
giving this out to you and you tell me if you think they are real and you
tell me why. And I think this has to do with this whole idea, not so
much the questions of the moths but the way we perceive reality. In
profound situations of great sadness, grief and love, the imagination
and the heart is limitless in what it provides you and how it
compensates your feelings and how it helps you through these
things. I think the moths, for me, are very real, and I think they are
simply these beautiful…I don’t really want to say symbol, because to
say it’s a symbol would be to reduce the moths into something that is
not real. The moths have to go through a stage, like the caterpillar.
From the caterpillar comes the cocoon and from the cocoon the
butterfly. I didn’t want to say butterfly, because butterflies are beautiful,
moths are a little bit more destructive. There is a two edge to beauty,
to grief, sadness; there are always two sides to each of these things.
The moth is a perfect insect to come out of the grandmother’s mouth."
Where does this story take place?
“The story takes place in East Los Angeles. 1st Street is 1st Street
and Evergreen is Evergreen. Evergreen implies Eternal Life. I wasn’t
even thinking about this until someone pointed it out to me afterward.”
Why did the narrator never kiss the grandmother?
"There is a detachment that she feels from herself, even with her bull
hands, there is a detachment there. She sees herself in fragments.
This whole idea of identity, especially in adolescents...their identity is
shattered, they don’t know who they are. This unnamed narrator, who
is 14, does not know what love is. She might have an inkling to know
what love isn’t. She feels great affection for her grandmother but she
doesn’t know how deep and profound that affection and love is. She
see’s her grandmother as someone who she can have an escape in,
to feel normal, or to have a sense of freedom. All these things that she
doesn’t have at home or in the church."
In regards to the chapel why did she never return?
“There was no redemption or salvation for her there. The idea of
church brought only sadness and frustration. It brought a sense of
repression, and that repression is felt when her father is forcing her to
do something, or forcing religion down her throat. There is no
mysticism or mystery or sacredness at the church. The sacredness
that she feels and appreciates though she does not know it as that.... it
is when she goes to her grandmother’s house and she helps her
grandmother with the garden and there is a sacredness there that she
has yet to name. But she knows what it isn’t... and it isn’t in the
church.”
How do you feel about the scars on the grandmother’s back?
“I don’t know where those scars come from. I don’t know what
happened to her grandmother. What I think the narrator is looking at
though is the fact that there is always so much hidden in terms of
history that we don’t know anything about. Not until we go out and
seek it, and find it, uncover it, unbury it are we able to see that we are
missing something from our history. I don’t really have an answer for
the question.”
What do the moths symbolize?
"The Moths" has been in print for 20 years. It is still being
anthologized. It is something that resonates and its something that
students are constantly being asked. Are the moth’s real and what is
the symbolism of the moths? And I don’t have an answer for that. I’m
giving this out to you and you tell me if you think they are real and you
tell me why. And I think this has to do with this whole idea, not so
much the questions of the moths but the way we perceive reality. In
profound situations of great sadness, grief and love, the imagination
and the heart is limitless in what it provides you and how it
compensates your feelings and how it helps you through these
things. I think the moths, for me, are very real, and I think they are
simply these beautiful…I don’t really want to say symbol, because to
say it’s a symbol would be to reduce the moths into something that is
not real. The moths have to go through a stage, like the caterpillar.
From the caterpillar comes the cocoon and from the cocoon the
butterfly. I didn’t want to say butterfly, because butterflies are beautiful,
moths are a little bit more destructive. There is a two edge to beauty,
to grief, sadness; there are always two sides to each of these things.
The moth is a perfect insect to come out of the grandmother’s mouth."
Where does this story take place?
“The story takes place in East Los Angeles. 1st Street is 1st Street
and Evergreen is Evergreen. Evergreen implies Eternal Life. I wasn’t
even thinking about this until someone pointed it out to me afterward.”
Post your comments, thoughts and questions at the following link:
Helena Maria Viramontes | The Representation Community
© 2005
Helena Maria Viramontes | The Representation Community
© 2005