The Moths: Letting Your Emotions Own You

Helena Maria Viramontes was born in Los Angeles in 1954. She is a master of employing literary technique such as symbolism, setting and contrast throughout her poignant works as well as a repeated winner of several fiction contests such as the Irvine Chicano Literary Contest. In 1989 she was awarded a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and she is currently writing at Cornell. Viramontes principally writes about the lives of Latin women (Barnet et. al p.507). "The Moths" is a touching tale, by Viramontes, that explores the dynamics of a complicated relationship between a grand daughter and her cancerous Abuelita. The theme that is explored in the course of the tale is that owning your feelings to the point of suppression can often be more painful than allowing your feelings to own you. During emotionally challenging times we must all be able to let our guards down, be vulnerable and allow our emotions to own us. Powerful emotions such as loss and grief should never be suppressed because they continue to flutter recklessly within us like moths and repeatedly stir negative feelings. It is much healthier to confront our feelings as we experience them and work through them to the best of our abilities; that is the painful lesson our central character, the granddaughter, learns during the course of the tale.

Viramontes's short story collection in which The Moths appears is a vehicle for feminist statements regarding the status of family in the Chicana/o community (Saldivar-Hull). The Moths and Other Stories focuses on the lives of oppressed Chicana women; Viramontes's signature writing style exercises profound realism as well as natural and religious symbolism (Unknown 2). Of her Chicana experience, Viramontes admitted that a faculty member at the University of California at Irvine had once attempted to dissuade her from writing about Chicanos. The faculty member had asked her to stop writing about Chicanos and to start writing about people; Viramontes proudly asserted that people should never be shameful of who they are and that heritage should be celebrated (Unknown 1).