"Como agua para chocolate" Laura Esquivel
Como Agua Para Chocolate
Laura Esquivel’s Como Agua Para Chocolate (1993) or Like Water for Chocolate is set during the Mexican Revolution (1910-17) on a farmhouse in Mexico and follows the tragic love affair between a girl name Tita and her neighbour Pedro.
Tita’s personal magic lies in her cooking and it is through this that her feelings (and the magical realism of the story) are expressed. When Pedro is essentially forced into marrying Tita’s older sister, Tita is left with the task of baking the cake for a wedding she had hoped would be her own. In her pain, she weeps while she is cooking and her tears mix into the cake batter. Following this, everyone who eats the cake at the wedding falls violently ill and dreams of lost love. In this way and other events in the book, Tita’s love for Pedro is realised in her cooking and the way it affects other people.
It is a beautifully profound example of magical realism where the violent intensity of love takes a supernatural effect on the novel’s events and characters. Como Agua Para Chocolate is a staple of Latin American Magical Realism and was also made into an award winning 1992 film (of the same name.)
Tita’s personal magic lies in her cooking and it is through this that her feelings (and the magical realism of the story) are expressed. When Pedro is essentially forced into marrying Tita’s older sister, Tita is left with the task of baking the cake for a wedding she had hoped would be her own. In her pain, she weeps while she is cooking and her tears mix into the cake batter. Following this, everyone who eats the cake at the wedding falls violently ill and dreams of lost love. In this way and other events in the book, Tita’s love for Pedro is realised in her cooking and the way it affects other people.
It is a beautifully profound example of magical realism where the violent intensity of love takes a supernatural effect on the novel’s events and characters. Como Agua Para Chocolate is a staple of Latin American Magical Realism and was also made into an award winning 1992 film (of the same name.)