Fictional Reading and Magical Realism Week 1, Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
For the next two weeks I will be exploring magical realism in fictional works as it relates to food. In the Spring quarter of 2023, I did an ILC entitled Consuming Fictional Literature Surrounding Food, Culture, and Well-Being. I read seven books over those 10 weeks (It was only a four-credit ILC, don’t make my mistake), and among those were two of the books I will be re-studying in these two weeks. You can find my WordPress site from Spring 23 here if you are curious about my prior ILC or finding some fun novels about food.
This week I will be focusing on Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel, a novel about food, love, oppression, and freedom, set in 1910 Mexico on a ranch near the US/Mexican border. It follows our protagonist Tita as she documents her life and loves through her cookbook, now being read and narrated by her great-niece. Titans role as the youngest daughter in her family forbids her from marrying her childhood sweetheart when he comes to the ranch to propose, and much of the book focuses on their forbidden romance and fight against the family matriarch that keeps them separated. I did a quick re-read of the book, noting the sections I wanted to come back to explore further, and then re-read those sections in more detail for more complex and complete ideas. Of the chapters and scenes I highlighted in my notes, I created two categories that divided them by their main theme; food being used as a medium of emotional expression, and food being used as a means of escape, freedom, or salvation.
Examples of food being used as a medium of emotional expression are heavy in the book, although the writing doesn’t often tell you these things directly making you pick them up through patterns and hints. In chapter four Tita is preparing quail in rose petal sauce, now the designated cook of the family. Her childhood sweetheart, Pedro, is now in the house with her, married to her older sister after her mother refused the marriage between them. Pedro brings her a bouquet of fresh roses to celebrate her one-year anniversary as the ranch cook, which greatly upsets her mother and sister, who insist Tita get rid of the roses. Not being able to bring herself to trash the first flowers she had ever been given, and from the man she loved no less, she uses the petals and a drop of blood from the thorns in that night’s dinner, creating a meal with seemingly supernatural effects. The meal seems to be infused with Tita and Pedros lust for one another, acting as an aphrodisiac on her sister driving to run away with a rebellion soldier.
In chapter 7, Tita is tending the the cruel-hearted matriarch of the house, Mama Elena. There has never been love between these two in this book, due to Mama Elena’s insistence that the youngest daughter must never marry and instead stay home and take care of her parents in their old age. Throughout the book Tita defies her mother for her freedom and love in small and large instances, ultimately returning to the ranch to tend to Mama Elena when she falls sick. Her mother’s disdain for her seems to cause anything Tita cooks to taste bitter to her, despite having many people taste it for her and forcing Tita to try everything first under suspect of poisoning, she cannot seem to enjoy the food of the most highly praised chef in their area.
This chapter also lends itself to demonstrating my second category, food being used as a means of escape, freedom, or salvation. Tita spends the majority of the book under the control of other people, with her food as her only outlet for expression, and through the magical surrealism elements, her food is what she uses to escape the people causing her harm. Though never explicitly stated, the book alludes to Tita killing both her mother and her older sister when they kept her oppressed. It is not possible when using logic to assume that Titas food killed her mother, Tita tried her mother odd before her every day and was a highly praised chef, yet the woman who holds a deep disdain for her, who tasted bitterness even in the best dishes, grew weaker and eventually died on this same food. Later in chapter twelve, we see an almost identical pattern, Titas sister and her end up in an explosive fight over Pedro and the education of Titas niece. Despite no previous mentions of health issues, Titas sister passed away unexpectedly from digestive issues, leaving Tita free from all the people who held her back.
Fictional Writing
I chose to highlight magical realism in this project because I enjoy the beauty of taking a simple, realistic scenario and just adding a little of the supernatural or surreal to add a vibrancy or change in perspective in a scene. Having spent so much time studying food, emotion, and the varying fields around it, I wanted to study and recreate something with elements of magical realism because I think it may be the best way for me to try my hand at fiction while relating it to my own life.
This week I have been drafting and writing mini-stories using magical realism, I haven’t decided if I will continue this or expand upon one but my final product will be posted next week!