From the Mouths of Babes

By penning a story about the hardships and frustrations of migrant workers in the fields of California with her debut novel Under the Feet of Jesus, Helena Maria Viramontes inevitably invites comparisons with John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. While the novels obviously share some subject matter with one another, Viramontes' novel draws inspiration from the legacy of Cesar Chavez and the tradition of Mexican-American/Chicano literature and features themes of growing discontent on both a personal and a demographic level. Viramontes communicates these themes through an unlikely protagonist: a thirteen year-old girl, which allows her to develop them in an interesting and unusual way.

The growth and change that Estrella, the novel's young protagonist, experiences above all reflect the same things in the community of Mexican and Mexican-American migrant workers that she is a part of. In the beginning of the novel, Estrella is still young and innocent, full of curiosity the way only a child can be, and trusting of her family and her faith. Of course, since this is a coming of age novel, that does not last for long.

Viramontes' careful syntax depict the setting of her novel as a toxic place, figuratively and literally, with destructive effects on those who come of age within it that cause the changes Estrella and her loved ones undergo. Her California is still the Sunshine State, but the sunshine of this world beats down on the backs of laborers, browning their skin and making hard work that much more difficult.

Just as the sun prematurely ages her skin, so does the never-ending cycle of hard labor wear down Estrella's innocence. Viramontes' uses the motif of Estrella's hands, described as full of light and gradually obscured by dust from the work, to communicate her accelerated maturation. Estrella's story could be said to be an allegory of the story of migrant workers in America, and her initial innocence reflects the attitude of many of America's immigrants upon arriving in the country: hopeful, and wholly believing in the American Dream.

Likewise, the condition Estrella ends the novel in, frustrated, aggressive, and disillusioned, reflects that of migrant workers just before Chavez united and directed their frustration into the labor movement that seized the nation in the mid-twentieth century. The rise of the labor movement is paralleled in the most dramatic change Estrella undergoes: her loss of faith. This event coincides with her finally understanding Perfecto's insistence that the only people the family can trust is themselves and results in her taking control of her own destiny, the final step a person must take before they can truly overcome adversity.

The kind of growth that Estrella undergoes is only possible to depict in a coming-of-age novel. Viramontes' choice to tell the novel's story through the eyes of a child allows her to symbolically depict the origins of Chavez's labor movement through the journey of a person from childhood to maturity.