Denise Chávez
b. 1948

In our family, men usually come first. Then God and Country. Country was last. Should be last. When you grow up in the Southwest, your state is your country. There exists no other country outside that which you know. Likewise, neighborhood is a country. As your family is a country. As your house is a country. As you are a country.
- Face of an Angel

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Biography / Criticism

Denise Chávez was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico on August 15, 1948 to Epifanio and Delfina Chávez. Though her father was absent through much of her childhood, Chávez was influenced by the presence of her mother, who was a schoolteacher, and her two sisters, Faride Conway and Margo Chávez. Las Cruces, which is only forty miles from the Mexican border, lies in a unique region in America, distinguished by its cross-fertilization of Mexican and American cultures. Her household influences included many Mexican women, who not only cooked and cleaned the Chávez residence, but also helped to raise the three Chávez girls.

The bilingual backdrop of the Southern New Mexico town and the presence of Mexican help within the Chávez home helped to forge an appreciation for the art of bilingualism in Chávez. Her childhood was filled with the oral tradition of storytelling, which was a tremendous influence on Chávez, and is the reason that she refers to herself as a "performance writer." Her success in writing, she says, "comes from loving a good story, from having heard from the very best storytellers that one could possibly hear stories from" (Wheatwind 6).

When Chávez attended the Madonna High School in Mesilla, New Mexico, she enrolled in a theater class and discovered an interest in drama as a means of personal expression. She was awarded a drama scholarship to New Mexico State University where she studied with Mark Medoff, author of the play Children of a Lesser God. She received her bachelor's degree in drama in 1974, and went on to study at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas, where she received a master of fine arts degree in drama in 1974. She worked in the Dallas Theater Center, and continued her studies in drama and writing until 1984, when she received a master of fine arts degree in creative writing from the University of New Mexico.

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Chávez began writing play productions in the early 1970s, and her early work focused on the social and economic issues of the Chicano culture as well as bilingual speech and Chicano humor. Her more recent play productions are an expansion of her early themes, and tend to employ a more universal reflection of the state of society and self, as well as a broader experimentation with dramatic settings and style. Chávez has also written a wealth of poetry and short fiction, and in 1986, a collection of her short stories was published as a novel, The Last of the Menu Girls. These short stories, all interrelated, seem to recollect Chávez's own experiences; Rocio, her protagonist, has an absent father and works in a hospital, a job that Chávez once held as well.

The theme of service is prevalent in both The Last of the Menu Girls, and Face of an Angel, in the context of work, relationships, motherhood, and religion. In Face of an Angel, Soveida Dosamantes is a career waitress who compiles her knowledge of service in a book that documents the methods of achieving success in the workplace through professionalism, restraint, and proper attire. The humourous tone of Soveida's book of service is underscored by her startling insight into the origins of woman's calling to service in the Chicano society.

Although her poetry, short stories, and novels seem to shift focus from a broad view of the societal and economic issues of Chicano culture to a self-reflective exploration of women and service, Chávez does not cease to embrace her Chicano heritage and her deep rooted appreciation for the bilingual tongue. She integrates bilingualism into her works so completely that she even refuses to italicize Spanish words and phrases, a decision that has caused many an argument with her editors. "It's time for readers to pick up a little Spanish," she states. "It's like a plate of food with salsa, with the Spanish words the salsa. It gives [the writings] flavor" (Moran 3).

Chávez has found much strength and support in a network of fellow Chicano and Chicana writers, including Roberto Anaya, who encouraged her to send The Last of the Menu Girls to his publishers, and Sandra Cisneros, who praises Face of an Angel, saying, "I love this book so much it sounds like I'm lying" (Nericcio 792). Chávez is very active in the Chicano community, claiming her work is written for the poor and forgotten. Indeed, the characters in her writings are typically common folk, and it is through these characters that Chávez celebrates the strength and dignity of the working class.

Chávez has received many awards for her works, most notably the Puerto del Sol Fiction Award for The Last of the Menu Girls and the American Book Award for Face of an Angel. She continues to surround herself in literature by teaching creative writing in the English department of New Mexico State University. She lives in the house she grew up in and writes from the room in which she was born.

Selected Bibliography

Works by the Author

Loving Pedro Infante: a Novel (2000)
Face of an Angel (1994)
The Woman Who Knew the Language of Animals (1992)
The Last of the Menu Girls (1986)
Numerous plays, including Novitiates (1973); The Mask of November (1975); The Flying Tortilla Man (1975); Elevators (1977); The Adobe Rabbit (1980); Nacimiento (1980); Santa Fe Charm (1980); An Evening of Theater (1981); How Junior got Throwed in the Joint (1981); Si, Hay Posada (1981); El Santero De Cordova (1981); The Green Madonna (1982); Hecho en Mexico (1983); La Morenita (1983); Francis!, (1983); Plaza (1984); Plague-Time (1985); Novena Narrative (1987); The Step (1987); Language of Vision (1988); Women in the State of Grace (1989).

Works Edited by the Author

Daughters of the Fifth Sun: A Collection of Latina Fiction and Poetry (1995)
Chicana Creativity and Criticism: Charting New Frontiers in American Literature (1988)
The King and Queen of Comezon, and Love Poem (1988)
Cuentos Chicanos: A Short Story Anthology (1984)
Life is a Two Way Street (1980)

Other Projects

Selected the plays in Shattering the Myth: Plays by Hispanic Women, ed. Linda Feyder (1992)

Works about the Author

Anderson, Douglas. "Displaced Abjection and States of Grace: Denise Chávez's The Last of the Menu Girls." American Women Short Story Writers: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. Julie Brown. New York: Garland, 1995. 235-50.
Brown-Guillory. Denise Chàvez: Chicana Woman Writer Crossing Borders-An Interview. South Central Review: The Journal of the South Central Modern Language Association 16.1 (1999 Spring): 30-43.
Castillo, Debra A. "The Daily Shape of Horses: Denise Chávez and Maxine Hong Kingston." Journal of Comparative and Cultural Studies 16.41 (1991): 29-43.
Clark, William. "Denise Chávez: It's All One Language Here." Publisher's Weekly 241.33 (1994): 77.
Degliantoni, Lisa. Face of an Angel-Book Review. Library Journal 119.13 (August 1994): 124.
Drabanski, Emily. "Sound and Spirit of Life in a New Mexico Town." Los Angeles Times (November 1994): E6.
Eysturoy, Annie O. Denise Chávez. This Is About Vision: Interviews With Southwestern Writers. Ed. John F. Crawford, William Balassi, and Annie O. Eysturoy. Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1990: 157-69.
Heard, Martha E. The Theatre of Denise Chávez: Interior Landscapes with 'sabor nuevomexicano'. The Americas Review: A Review of Hispanic Literature and Art of the USA 16.2 (1988 Summer): 83-91.
Houston, Robert. Face of an Angel-Book Review. New York Times Book Review (September 1994): 20.
Ibarrarán, Bigalondo. The Power of Words in Denisa Chavez's Face of an Angel. Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses 13 (2000 Nov): 89-94.
Ikas, Karin. Denis Chávez, Las Cruces, New Mexico in Interview. Anglistik: Mitteilungen des Verbandes deutscher Anglisten 9.2 (1998): 7-20.
Joyce, Alice. Face of an Angel-Book Review. Booklist. 91.2 (1994): 110.
Keating, AnaLouise. Towards a New Politics of Representation? Absence and Desire in Denise Chávez's The Last of the Menu Girls. We Who Love to Be Astonished: Experimental Women's Writing and Performance Poetics. Ed. Laura Hinton and Cynthia Hogue. Tuscaloosa, AL: U of Alabama P, 2002. 71-80.
Mehaffy, Marilyn and AnaLouise Keating. 'Carrying the Message': Denise Chávez on the Politics of Chicana Becoming. Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies 26.1 (2001 Spring): 127-56.
Moran, Julio. "My Dream Was to Work at the Dairy Queen." LA Times. (November 1994): Life and Style 1.
Moscoso, Eunice. Face of an Angel-Book Review. Hispanic 8.2.
Nericcio, William. Face of an Angel-Book Review. World Literature Today. 69 (September 1995): 792.
Richter, Francine K. Romantic Women and La Lucha: Denise Chavez's Face of an Angel. Great Plains Quarterly 19.4 (1999 Fall): 277-89.
Socolovsky, Maya. Narrative and Traumatic Memory in Denise Chávez's Face of an Angel. MELUS: The Journal of the Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States 28.4 (2003 Winter): 187-205.

Works in Languages other than English

Spanish
- Por el amor de Pedro Infante. Trans. Ricardo Aguilar Melantzón y Beth Pollack. New York: Vintage Espanol, 2002.
- Loving Pedro Infante. Trans. Gerardo de la Torre. México: Planeta, 2002.
- La mujer que sabía el idioma de los animals. Fotografías de Jim Caldwell. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993.

Denise Chávez b. 1948