Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel como agua para

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Like Water for Chocolateby Laura Esquivel
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como agua para chocolate

• In some Latin American countries, such as Mexico,
  hot chocolate is made not with milk, but with
  water instead. Water is boiled and chunks of milk
  chocolate are dropped in to melt. The saying
  "like water for chocolate," alludes to this fact
  and also to the common use of the expression as a
  metaphor for describing a state of passion or
  sexual arousal. In some parts of Latin America,
  the saying is also equivalent to being 'boiling
  mad' in anger.

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Laura Esquivel

• LWFC was Esquivels first novel
• Met with unusual success when it was published in
  1989
• Translated from Spanish into English in 1992 and
  became a best seller
• English-subtitled film became one of the most
  popular foreign language films in American film
  history

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• I grew up in a modern home, but my grandmother
  lived across the street in an old house that was
  built when churches were illegal in Mexico. She
  had a chapel in the home, right between the
  kitchen and the dining room. The smell of nuts
  and chilies and garlic got all mixed up with the
  smells from the chapel, my grandmothers
  carnations, the liniments and healing herbs.

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lo maravilloso real magical realism

• First developed by Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier
• Lo maravilloso real, 1949
• Generally describes novels by Latin American
  writers that are infused with distinct
  fantastical, mythical, and epic themes

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• Often explained as a unique product of Latin
  America, particularly its history of European
  colonialism
• Resulted in a delicate relationship between the
  contradictory, yet co-existing, forces of
  indigenous religion and the powerful Catholic
  Church
• Often involves
• Time shifts
• Dreams
• Myths
• Fairy tales
• Surrealistic descriptions
• Element of surprise or shock
• The inexplicable

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Adapted from M. H. Abrams A Glossary of Literary
Terms, 6th ed.

• these writers interweave, in a an ever-shifting
  pattern, a sharply etched realism in representing
  ordinary events and descriptive details together
  with fantastic and dreamlike elements . . .
• these novels violate, in various ways, standard
  novelistic expectations by drastic and
  sometimes highly effective experiments with
  subject matter, form, style, temporal sequence,
  and fushions of the everday, the fantastic . . .

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• The fantastical element in Titas cooking is that
  it produces such strong emotions in her family
• The art of cooking reflets the patience and
  talent of the cook
• The spirits who appear to Tita symbolize the
  long-lasting effects of those who impact our
  lives and our own feelings of responsibility and
  guilt

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Significant works of magical realism . . . some
of Shaffers favorites

• Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits (and her
  other works as well)
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of
  Cholera, One Hundred Years of Solitude
• Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
• Ben Okri, The Famished Road
• Yann Martel, The Life of Pi

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Set against the Mexican Revolution of 1910 1917

• Most important modernizing force in Mexican
  history
• Peasants and natives banded together under the
  leadership of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata to
  reject dictatorship and revive democracy
• Claim Mexico for the everyday man and woman

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As you read, watch for . . .

• The physical illnesses that plague the characters
• The role of ghosts
• The role of tradition
• Fire as a symbol
• The different personalities of the three De La
  Garza sisters
• Their options
• The domestic life of women

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The recipes make it work . . .

• Esperanza finds her aunts cookbook in the ruins
  of the De La Garza ranch.
• As she recreates the recipes in her home, she
  passes down the family stories to her daughter.
• Her daughter becomes the novels narrator as she
  incorporates her great-aunts recipes, remedies,
  and experiences into the story.
• She justifies her unique narrative Tita will
  go on living as long as there is someone who
  cooks her recipes.

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A womans place

• Richard Corliss Laura Esquivel brought Gabriel
  Garcia Marquezs brand of magic realism into the
  kitchen and the bedroom, the Latin womans
  traditional castle and dungeon.
• Traditionally, a Latin womans place is in the
  home, especially in the patriarchal society of
  the early 20th century
• Women expected to serve fathers, brothers then
  they got married and served husbands, sons, and
  daughters

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• Women turned to the domestic arts for creative
  outlets, along with storytelling, gossip, and
  advice
• Created their own female culture within the
  social prison of married life
• Maria Elena de Valdes notes that little has
  changed for the Mexican woman She must be
  strong and far more clever than the men who
  supposedly protect her. She must be pious,
  observing all the religious requirements of a
  virtuous daughter, wife, and mother. She must
  exercise great care to keep her sentimental
  relations as private as possible, and, most
  important of all, she must be in control of life
  in her house, which means essentially the kitchen
  and bedroom or food and sex.

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• Based on genre of womens fiction published in
  monthly installments in calendars for young
  ladies
• Also included recipes, dressmaking patterns, home
  remedies, moral exhortations, and calendars of
  church observances
• 1860s installment novel grew out of the
  monthly recipe
• Elaborate love stories by women appeared in the
  1880s
• Episodic plots, overt sentimentality
• By the end of the century every literate Mexican
  woman was an avid reader of this genre

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• Behind the simple episodic plots there was an
  infrahistory of life as it was lived with all the
  multiple restrictions for women of this social
  class
• Heroines were survivors
• Led full lives despite marriage
• Transcended conditions of existence and expressed
  themselves through love and creativity
• A la mesa y a la cama, una sola vez se llama

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Each chapter is prefaced by the title, the
subtitle, the month, and the recipe for that month

• Narration that follows is a combination of direct
  addresson how to prepare the recipe and
  interspersed stories about the loves and times of
  the narrators great-aunt Tita

• Narration moves from first person to the
  third-person omniscient
• Each chapter ends with the information that the
  story will be continued and an announcement of
  next months recipe

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• The recipes and their preparation, as well as
  the home remedies and their application, are an
  intrinsic part of the story. There is therefore
  an intrinsic symbiotic relationship between the
  novel and its model in the reading experience.
  Each is feeding on the other.
• Maria Elena de Valdes