Helena Maria Viramontes is a professor, scholar-activist, and renowned author of works of fiction and nonfiction. Her work has been anthologized and is read widely in the United States and abroad. For many of her readings and speaking engagements she arrives wearing a rebozo, a shawl worn by Mexican and Chicana women living on both sides of the US Mexico border. Once, when asked about her rebozo, Viramontes explained that the pre-Columbian icon is her security blanket, which she embraces in order to find comfort. For her readers, her writing functions like a "rebozo de palabras, a shawl woven...