Racial Violence, Embodied Practices, and Ethnic Transformation in Helena María Viramontes's "Neighbors" and "Their Dogs Came with Them"

Helena Maria Viramontes's short story Neighbors from the collection The Moths and Other Stories (1995) and her 2007 novel Their Dogs Came with Them (Their Dogs) juxtapose the everyday lives of their characters against the public realm of the city, which de Certeau states is itself a universal a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Bilingual Review 2012-09, Vol.31 (3), p.262-278
Main Author: Seliger, Mary A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Behavior
Collective memory
Cultural heritage
Domestic violence
Empowerment
Ethnicity
Grandparents
Literary Genres
Memory
Mental Disorders
Neighborhoods
Novels
Quarantine
Racial Identification
Racism
Research and Criticism / Investigaciones y Crítica
Social classes
Trauma
Violence
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Summary:Helena Maria Viramontes's short story Neighbors from the collection The Moths and Other Stories (1995) and her 2007 novel Their Dogs Came with Them (Their Dogs) juxtapose the everyday lives of their characters against the public realm of the city, which de Certeau states is itself a universal and anonymous subject in The Practice of Everyday Life (1984, 1994, emphasis original). Trauma shapes cultural memory as the fragmented Neighbors of Bixby Street and the four female protagonists of Their Dogs resort to nonlinear processes of remembering and forgetting the construction of a freeway system that destroys their working class neighborhoods. Just as intersecting freeways fragment and interrupt the physical landscape of East Los Angeles, incomplete physical patterns change the character of social relationships. Consideration of time and place are essential to the understanding of Viramontes's characters. In an interview given on Mar 30, 1998, in Spain to Carmen Flys-Junquera, Viramontes explains that for her, place is defined by where home is.
ISSN:0094-5366
2327-624X