While several books provide us with beautiful and harsh truths about other cultures, this novel is not one of them. A chaotically written story that bounces around the life of the central characters, combined with weak character development and far too many adjectives in every sentence, make for quite possibly the worst book I have ever had the misfortune to read. Wholly depressing and utterly incomprehensible, I would steer clear of this and instead pick up a copy of The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinback.

Under the Feet of Jesus by Helena Maria Viramontes is one of the texts that has made the biggest impact on me in my reading experience. It is a novel about a girl, Estrella, who is in the process of becoming a woman. She and her family travel in the United States looking for work and end up laboring in fields all day for little pay. Estrella learns about love as she meets Alejo, who works in the same fields as Estrella's family, and in turn, the readers learn about the turmoil that many Mexicans faced. The family risks being picked up by the Border Patrol (though they are U.S. citizens) as well as being looked down on for their skin color and poverty.
Viramontes does a wonderful job describing the less than savory conditions that Estrella and her family face in their journey through life. Her beautiful, descriptive words leave the readers in a state of agony over the trials that the family encounters. We are disgusted when the characters are treated badly by upper class white people. Later we cheer Estrella on when she fights back, demanding that the nurse give her family the last of their money back if she could not do anything for Alejo, who is getting progressively sicker due to the pesticide that is sprayed on the fields where the family works.
Compared to other texts in the Latino tradition, Under the Feet of Jesus is quite different. Like many other Latino/a writers, Viramontes definitely takes a good look at the social injustice of the conditions that Estrella and her family live with, yet she mixes her cries of injustice with words that paint a beautiful picture of the landscape and leave the readers feeling as if they are experiencing everything along with the characters instead of just reading words on a page. The dream-like language floats in and out of different stories of Estrella's life all the way to the end of the novel, which flows with the rest of the book, leaving its readers wondering what happens to Estrella.

This is a short novel, 176 pages. The stories characters, a Chicano migrant family, are very finely crafted. They are very real. Perfecto is probably the most powerfully drawn. He is probably about 73, with a wife about 40 years younger than himself and several stepchildren including thirteen year old Estrella who could be said to be the novel's main character.

Estrella's father abandoned Petra, the mother and her children. Perfecto feels the urge to do just that towards the end of the book during a particularly difficult period. I'd have to say that the description of Perfecto's turmoil is probably a close second in the book to the scene where Estrella explodes in the medical clinic, where her class resentments are taken out on the poor white nurse.

Now, I got the feeling through reading this book that it might have been better edited. The author just might be the greatest confector of similes in the history of humanity though I thought she might have laid them on in the book a bit too heavy. There are streches in the book where the writing is first rate, full of vigor; then other periods when it is less vigorous but still well done. But after I finished the book, I thought to myself that the book could not have been written any other way for better or for worse.

In conclusion, this is a very finely crafted story of a poor migrant family, perhaps very typical, as they engage in back breacking labor for long hours at ten cents an hour under terrible working and living conditions, breathing in pesticides, enriching their bosses and giving us cheap fruit and vegetables.

I read this for a Literature and Culture class. We were presumably to read excerpts, but I finished the book, shut in that I am. I found these stories at turns fascinating, poignant, and annoying. The Moths is a touching and true-feeling story of devotion between a dying grandmother and her granddaughter. As one reads of the narrator tenderly bathing her disoriented, cancer-gnawed grandmother, the question occurs: Is the author commenting on the selfishness of our attempts at helping others, our efforts offshoots of a feeling of "obligation" to our benefactors? Or is it a comment on the Hispanic family structure, or merely an illustration of one moment?

Growing is a bittersweet story of sisterly devotion, from the hispanic perspective. Naomi evolves from a perception of her younger sister Lucia as an onus (an escort) to a realization of her as a worthy, budding human being, all of which has for a catalyst a game of baseball played by some barrio children.

Birthday involves a young girls abortion, and is the sometimes lamentable introduction of stream of consciousness into the author's stories. Other stories become more disturbing, both in topic (The Cariboo Cafe masterfully treats the brutality of the border patrol while neighbors studies the disintegration of urban hispanic neighborhoods), while Snapshots, the story of an old woman deemed crazy for her attachment to the past, is infused with a doleful brilliance.

I have boundless respect for the technique of stream of consciousness, from Faulkner's babbling yokels to Woolf's introspective, ethereal characterizations. But it has to be done sparingly (especially these days, when the technique is old hat) and adroitly. These two stipulations are the only two for which Miss Viramontes does not answer in full on this work. Still worth your time, though.

In Philadelphia, over the past summer, I happened to be in a used book store perusing the shelves for a good read. Being a student of writing, I thought after a short time, that I should look for some works by my professors at school. The first author I looked for was Helena Maria Viramontes, because the way she talks about writing is better than a lot of the stuff authors publish. She always talks in class about her novel, Under the Feet of Jesus, or her new work. All they had was a collection of short stories that I didn't remember ever having heard her talk about, called The Moths and Other Stories. I picked it up, bought it, and by the end of the day had finished reading it. What a great collection of stories it is. It's so enjoyable to read that you finish it before you would like to. I have told professor Viramontes about my finding it, and she said that she rarely thought of the collection anymore, but that she was very happy with some of the stories it contained. I was very happy with the whole book. I think you will be too.