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    A Study Guide for Helena María Viramontes's "The Moths"
    A Study Guide for Helena María Viramontes's "The Moths"
    A Study Guide for Helena María Viramontes's "The Moths"
    Ebook35 pages24 minutes

    A Study Guide for Helena María Viramontes's "The Moths"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Helena María Viramontes's "The Moths", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateSep 13, 2018
    ISBN9781535868112
    A Study Guide for Helena María Viramontes's "The Moths"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Helena María Viramontes's "The Moths" - Gale

      19

      The Moths

      Helena María Viramontes

      1985

      Introduction

      The Moths is a story by Mexican American writer Helena María Viramontes. It was published in Viramontes's collection of short stories, The Moths and Other Stories, in 1985. A second edition of this volume was published in 1995. The Moths was also anthologized in Infinite Divisions: An Anthology of Chicana Literature, edited by Tey Diana and Eliana S. Rivero (1993).

      The story, which is set in East Los Angeles, is told by a Mexican American (or Chicana) woman who looks back at her early teenage years. Life was difficult for her because she did not fit in well with her family. Her authoritarian father and her mother appear to have been unhappily married, parental discipline was harsh, and the protagonist quarreled violently with her two older sisters. Her relationship with her grandmother, Abuelita, was much better, however, and gave her some solace. When her grandmother died, it was a powerful moment of transformation for the fourteen-year-old girl.

      The story is an excellent example of Chicana literature of the 1980s, a decade in which female Mexican American writers were beginning to emerge into the literary mainstream, contributing novels, short stories, and poetry that gave expression to their Hispanic culture and tradition.

      Author Biography

      Viramontes was born in East Los Angeles on February 26, 1954. She grew up as one of seven children in an impoverished working-class home where Spanish was the language spoken. She was raised as a Catholic. Her father, Serafin, worked as a day laborer on construction sites, and in the summers, the family earned extra money picking fruit in Northern California, which Viramontes, in an interview with Jeff Kass for the Los Angeles Times, said was incredibly, incredibly hard work.

      Viramontes was attracted to writing at an early age. When her parents went away on a trip when she was ten, she wrote down everything her siblings got up to while they were away, she told Kass. In the same interview, Viramontes says of writing, "It tattooed my brain. Writing is

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