In Chicana/o prose, namely the fiction of Helena María Viramontes, the artistic depiction of the city of Los Angeles becomes a synecdochic expression of the frontier space. It is a crossroads of viewpoints stemming from the confrontation of the dividing physical frontier and the porous cultural frontier that leads to miscenegation. The article analyzes such a literary representation of space using the contrasting dynamics of the literary images of the Latino barrio and the urban freeways that threaten to destroy it. It emphasizes a different approach of Viramontes to the urban myth of the Californian metropolis. With its references to Latin-American authors, the article furthermore suggests the possibility of reading the Viramontes novel as part of the Latin-American literary tradition.
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