Helena Maria Viramontes is a widely anthologised Chicanx author and professor of English at Cornell University. A key figure in the literary community, her work is a major feature of the Latinx cannon and widely read in circles outside of the traditional (often color- and gender-washed) vein. Born in East LA in the 1950s, Viramontes’ work is a reflection of the social and political circumstances in which she was raised. As a feminist author of Mexican-American descent, much of her work revolves around issues relating to the Chicano Civil Rights Movement led by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta the 1960s. However, in contrast to the typically masculine Chicano Movement, Viramontes’ stories focus on women as they struggle against the boundaries of poverty and a misogynist culture. Her realist narrative style is a bitter example of the sociopolitical struggles faced by Latin women living in the United States. Though Viramontes’ prose carries the exhaustive emotional weight of poverty and racial injustice, it remains unadorned and concise. Imagery and symbolism imbue her stories with a powerful lyricism, but her portal of Xicanx lives is not idealistic. There is an overriding honesty to the fictions she creates. Her women are familiar, if not throbbing, living beings and the voice she uses to build them is as stripped and raw as the lives they lead.
Helena Maria Viramontes’ short novel, Under the Feet of Jesus, follows 13-year old Estrella, a young migrant, as she crashes headlong into first love, first heartbreak, and social injustice. Through the course of only a few days, these experiences will all compile to shape her transition from a girl into a woman. Traveling through the fields and orchards of the American West, Estrella and her family are too poor to eat the food they’re tasked to pick. They are the invisible hands feeding America. This invisibility is a key feature of Viramontes’ poignant immigration narrative.
Estrella travels with her younger siblings and her mother, Petra. Abandoned by her husband, the father who exists only in Estrella’s fading memories of peeled oranges and veiled farewells, Petra relies heavily on the help of her older companion, Perfecto, but dreams of youth and romance increasingly call him back to the warmth of the Mexican desert. So long as he stays, the family members pack their few possessions into Perfecto’s car and trade their hands for meager wages that barely cover the journey from farm to farm. It is at their new job that Estrella meets Alejo, another young migrant who travels with his cousin. Much like Perfecto trades handiwork for supplies, Alejo makes extra money by selling stolen peaches, but things take a turn for the worse when he gets caught in a cloud of pesticides—a poison which seeps into the water the workers drink and invades the dust they breathe. Infected with el daño of the fields, Alejo can no longer work, and if he can’t work, then he can’t stay. Abandoned by the men who must go off in search of a new job, Estrella persuades her family to help the young, ailing man. Without enough money for a doctor, and unable to trade hand skills for aid, Estrella’s quest to save her first love pits her against the faces she and her companions risk their lives daily to feed.
With under 200 pages, Under the Feet of Jesus is an unassumingly compelling read. The omnipotent narrator weaves between the consciousness of several migrants, but it is Estrella and her initiation into a life of struggle and heartbreak that shines brightly as the novel’s core. Standing on a barn with the stars illuminating the sky behind her, Estrella is an angelic statue, immovable over the vast fields and orchards, which have defined the trajectory of her life. She is only a child when we first see her picking fruit in the dusty fields, but over the course of a few days we watch her fall in love, feel the first pangs of a broken heart and thrust head-first into unshakable womanhood.
As Estrella’s coming-of-age story closes, we know the years ahead of her won’t be any easier than the days behind her, and yet, perched against fate and gravity, standing on the roof of a barn she and Perfecto must tear down for extra money, Estrella is a point of light against the darkened sky—the very
Let me know what you think of Helena Maria Viramontes’ migrant bildungsroman, Under the Feet of Jesus. For me, it was an exceptionally relatable, short, sweet read that I hope you’ll enjoy as well.
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