Hoyt Street

Mary Helen Ponce, professor of literature and creative writing, is the author of Taking Control, The Wedding, and the forthcoming Los Emigrantes, which is based on the 1774-1775 Spanish expedition to Alta California. Her work has been published in France, Germany, Mexico, Spain, and Romania. She resides in Sunland, California.

"I am overjoyed to be invited into la casita on Hoyt Street... Thank you, Mary Helen, for placing your house on the map, for inviting me to the intimacy of its rooms, allowing me the privilege to sit at the table and be nourished. In naming your own life history on Hoyt Street, you are also naming mine." -- Sandra Cisneros. "(Mary Helen Ponce's) ability to create detailed descriptions of the language, clothes, houses, and food Mexican-Americans embraced during World War II and the fifties becomes a priceless portrait of how tradition builds and sustains all cultures." -- The Nation. "Drawing on a child's freshness of vision, Hoyt Street depicts growing up Mexican-American as the norm, not as a sociological phenomenon. It will touch your heart; make you laugh out loud." -- El Mundo Latino.