The images of stones, bones, and tar form a motif in Helena Maria Viramontes's Under the Feet of Jesus. From Alejo's sickness to the encounter with the nurse, these images are continually linked to each other to depict a wide range of the...

In the novel Under the Feet of Jesus, author Helena María Viramontes introduces the protagonist Estrella as a poor and uneducated girl. Estrella is a migrant, and therefore her teachers do not treat her well. Her inability to speak or write...

The emotional heart of Helena Maria Viramontes' novel, Under the Feet of Jesus, revolves around the mental, physical, and spiritual coming-of-age of Estrella, a 13-year-old Latina girl living with her family on a migrant labor farm. As a foil to...

Since its 1987 publication in Chicana Creativity and Criticism: Charting New Frontiers in American Literature, Helena María Viramontes’s short story “Miss Clairol” has provided outsiders a look into the Chicana culture, and has also sparked a...