Professional Career
Her short stories have been published in a variety of literary journals. The major themes of her stories are informed by her childhood experiences in East Los Angeles, and the impact of César Chávez and the United Farm Workers on the life of her family. Many of her works feature strong female characters, and child protagonists figure prominently into her work. Other works have been deemed "democratic novels", in that no single protagonist dominates the storyline. Throughout all of her work, a love of life and of all of humanity pervades, despite poverty and the other challenges her characters face.
Viramontes is a currently a professor of English at Cornell University.
Read more about this topic: Helena Maria Viramontes
Famous quotes containing the words professional and/or career:
“Never be intimidated when you deal with men. Curse, don’t cry.”
—Anonymous, U.S. professional woman. As quoted in Aspirations and Mentoring in an Academic Environment, ch. 4, by Mary Niles Maack and Joanne Passet (1994)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)