Helena María Viramontes's short stories about urban barrios and border towns relate previously unheard realities of Chicano life. Her relentlessly probing tales are typical of an emerging tendency in feminist Chicana authors to unveil the prejudices of the dominant society. Her art is always politically based, and the power of her words shows a Chicana subverting dominant patriarchal practices.

The daughter of working-class parents, Viramontes was born on 26 February 1954 and raised in East Los Angeles. Her father was a construction worker. Her mother was a traditional Chicana who not only raised six daughters and three sons but also found room in an already crowded house for friends and relatives who crossed the border from Mexico searching for the promises that "el otro lado" (the other side) offered. Viramontes vividly remembers "late night kitchen meetings where everyone talked and laughed in low voices"--voices aching with hopeful...