Alma Luz Villanueva

"To her first novel, The Ultraviolet Sky, Alma Luz Villanueva brings the poet's divination for image and internal logic, expressed in a series of dream sequences that hauntingly conclude each section and alter the hard forms of reality like a watercolor wash applied last. It's a fitting metaphor for her painter protagonist, Rosa, who embodies the modern feminist Chicana woman's struggle for self-definition in the male-centered Mexican culture as well as in the larger patriarchal culture.... Like her heroines, Villanueva found that articulating her experience was not without obstacles, and her voice comes from a deep reserve of personal power. She dropped out of high school in the tenth grade to have the first of her four children, later completing college and earning an M.F.A.... In The Ultraviolet Sky, the Chicana experience is extremely complex, and the challenge she poses to her readers is one she grapples with herself directly. Apparently, Villanueva was only awaiting the pace, expanse, and multiplicity of view afforded by the novel form in order to examine issues of Chicana identity.... The protagonist has in her mind a painting she cannot finish, a composition of balance and infinite harmonies. Villanueva's ultraviolet sky is overhead for all of us."