Book Review: "Their Dogs Came With Them"

In aid of celebrating International Women's Day, what better way than to introduce this heart wrenching novel by Helena María Viramontes; "Their Dogs Came With Them." Granted, I was required to read this text for my Literature module, but I'm so glad to have come across this text because it speaks on genocide in the Amerícas and colonial violence. More specifically, in East Los Angeles during the 1960s when Chicana lives were centred in turmoil and the feminist movements contributed to a chaotic questioning of their Civil rights.

           

The narrative changes every chapter, progressing from one female voice to the other, when finally the reader realises that there are four young female protagonists. Each struggle with different aspects of their human identities and grow to gain intelligence and moral understanding of their separate, though wholly similar, injustices. Turtle was my favourite character, as she (or I should say he) is a gender bending character that joins her older brother’s gang in an attempt to survive in the violence of East Los Angeles. Without giving too much away, Viramontes troubles the reader’s idea of gender and sexuality and in her own right, makes her writing her politics.

            Drawing upon International Women’s Day, this novel also succeeds in focusing on women as the breadwinners and provider of the family; opposing the conventional, ingrained notion of only men being adapt to fulfil this role. Not only do the women carry their own burdens throughout the novel, but they carry also the entirety of their families worries and it makes me reflect upon and admire the role of my own mother, as I assume many other readers do with their own. By the end of the novel, I literally had to fight back my tears as although it doesn’t end on a happy note, the significance of the turn of events are beautiful and made me re-evaluate the colonising effects of the past which greatly impact the lives of today. It’s so empowering to find women who still fight for our rights of equality, sexuality and human identity today.

Happy International Women’s Day ladies!!