


Como Agua Para Chocolate is the original Spanish title for the 1989 book (and subsequent 1992 film) “Like Water for Chocolate” by Mexican author Laura Esquivel. I chose this book to reexamine because it (and the film) was used in my third-year Spanish class in high school. It was the first time I really remember feeling confident that I could read in Spanish, and the first time I was able to watch a film in Spanish without panicking about needing to read subtitles. 

	The book begins each chapter with a receta, a recipe. They seem like serious recipes at first, but they segue into stories in the life of Josefita (Tita) de la Garza. Tita is the youngest of three daughters of Mama Elena on a ranch near the U.S. / Mexico border during the Mexican Revolution. Tita’s fate as the youngest daughter, according to family tradition, is to never marry and take care of her mother until the mother dies (Tita’s father dies when she is a child, and bears almost nothing on the plot).  

Tita is raised in the kitchen as an apprentice to the cook, Nacha, where she becomes a phenomenal cook with a very deep, personal connection to food, to the point where her emotions become imbued in every dish she makes (the novel falls into the Magic Realism genre, where the supernatural is treated as commonplace). Tita is in love with ranch hand Pedro, who returns her affections. When Mama Elena refuses to consent to their marriage because of the aforementioned tradition, Pedro marries Tita’s eldest sister, Rosaura, to be closer to Tita. The recipes explore what happens with the ups and downs of that relationship and the food Tita produces because of it: tears in the batter of the wedding cake cause everyone at Rosaura and Pedro’s wedding to become very ill, and the sadness kills Nacha; a lusty dish of quail in a sauce of petals from roses given to Tita by Pedro cause middle sister Gertrudis to literally start a fire with lust and run off into the arms of a passing revolutionary soldier, etc. Pedro and Tita become even closer, arranging secret meetings under the context of him seeking to feed Roberto, his son with Rosaura, because Rosaura cannot breastfeed. Mama Elena suspects the relationship between Tita and Pedro, and insists that Rosaura take her husband and son and move to San Antonio. Roberto dies very shortly thereafter, but Rosaura manages to have another child before being rendered sterile: a daughter named Esperanza. 

Tita takes Roberto’s death very hard, and, following an argument with Mama Elena, she secludes herself in the chicken coop (or, more properly translated, a dovecote). Doctor John Brown is called to institutionalize Tita, but decides to take her to his home and care for her there with his son, Alex. They become very close, almost as family, but Tita forever loves Pedro. Dr. Brown understands this, and lets Tita go. 