Slender and yet panoramic in scope, historical and yet relevant to current-day concerns, Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate has provoked from the outset a divergent range of critical opinions. ...The essays in A Recipe for Discourse: Perspectives on Like Water for Chocolate represent the novel's problematic nature in their many diverse approaches, perspectives that are certain to awaken in the reader new ways of approaching the text while challenging old ones. This volume's 'dialogue' format, in which essays are grouped thematically, is particularly effective in presenting such a diverse range of viewpoints. The reader will find herein lively discussion on LWFC as it relates to such themes as gastronomy, superstition, mythology, folklore, the Mexican Revolution, magical realism, female identity, alteration, and matriarchy/ patriarchy. It is the editor's hope that a diverse readership, from undergraduate students to seasoned scholars, will find this volume engaging and enlightening.
Weaving strands of Chicana and Mexicana subjectivities, Toward a Latina Feminism of the Americas explores political and theoretical agendas, particularly those that undermine the patriarchy, across a ...diverse range of Latina authors. Within this range, calls for a coalition are clear, but questions surrounding the process of these revolutionary dialogues provide important lines of inquiry. Examining the works of authors such as Sandra Cisneros, Laura Esquivel, Carmen Boullosa, and Helena María Viramontes, Anna Sandoval considers resistance to traditional cultural symbols and contemporary efforts to counteract negative representations of womanhood in literature and society. Offering a new perspective on the oppositional nature of Latina writers, Sandoval emphasizes the ways in which national literatures have privileged male authors, whose viewpoint is generally distinct from that of women—a point of departure rarely acknowledged in postcolonial theory. Applying her observations to the disciplinary, historical, and spatial facets of literary production, Sandoval interrogates the boundaries of the Latina experience. Building on the dialogues begun with such works as Sonia Saldivar-Hull’s Feminism on the Border and Ellen McCracken’s New Latina Narrative, this is a concise yet ambitious comparative approach to the historical and cultural connections (as well as disparities) found in Chicana and Mexicana literature.
This essay explores the complexity of Laura Esquivel's conciliatory approach to the figure of Malinche in her novelMalinche(2006). I read the text in relation to textual and visual representations by ...Mexican and Chicana feminists. I also analyze the first three editions of the novel in the U.S. and in Mexico. As a result, I analyze symbolic betrayals that have to do with processes of cultural translation. In this context, I discuss the function of Esquivel as a writer in-between cultures who has the authority to design the plot and to be a traitor, but may also be betrayed in the process.
Este ensayo explora la compleja posición conciliadora de Esquivel con respecto a la figura de la Malinche en su novelaMalinche(2006). Un estudio del texto en relación a representaciones textuales y visuales de feministas mexicanas y chicanas, así como un análisis de las tres primeras ediciones de la novela en Estados Unidos y México, revelan distintos procesos de traición que tienen que ver con procesos de traducción cultural. En este contexto, discuto la función de Esquivel como escritora entre culturas con autoridad para construir la trama, traicionar y ser traicionada.
This research shows that the Mexican novel Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel belongs to the Magical Realism due to it contains several characteristics of this Latin American current such as ...syncretisms, myths, legends, and social problems like femenine repression. Furthermore, it is shown that Esquivel’s work is not light and does not imitate Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s work.In chapter 1 of this work, historical aspects within the novel are be analyzed such as slavery in the United States and the participation of women soldier, soldaderas, in the Mexican Revolution. In chapter 2, aspects of magical realism like sincretisms, myths, legends, and the uncanny as a result of syncretisms in the life of Tita de la Garza are analyzed. In chapter 3, the social problem of feminine repression and what different feminine characters in the novel represent.Finally, it is established that Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate belongs to Magical Realism, it is not a light literary work, and it is not a copy of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s work.
Ibsen discusses Laura Esquivel's "Como agua para chocolate" (1989) novel and suggests that Esquivel has neither replicated the male canon nor popular "woman's" literature.
Pleasure zone Cooke, Rachel
New statesman (1996),
08/2001, Volume:
14, Issue:
671
Magazine Article
Laura Esquivel's latest offering is not half so delicious as its predecessor. Swift as Desire tells the story of Jubilo, who, thanks to his Mayan ancestry, was born with a pointed head and an ...extrasensory gift for reading between the lines: when others speak, only he can see what is really written on their hearts.
Nos aclara además, que su motivación se funda en la necesidad de recuperar la vision del hombre nuevo, aunque ya no en termines del ser político social propuesto por los escritores de la década del ...sesenta, sino como aquel quien consigue reintegrar a su vida los sabores perdidos del pasado perpetuando en ello, el valor de los ritos y ceremonias que nos unen con el universo. Sin embargo, al ir creciendo e ir tomando consciencia de la politica imperialista estadounidense, su percepción personal se va definiendo, "En esa época la Coca-Cola me empezó a saber amarga. El monólogo interior de una perturbada conciencia que se debate entre lo carnal y lo espiritual, nos sugiere a una imaginaria colega de Sor Juana, hija de una de las mejores familias del México colonial y residente del convento de La Concepción.
Writer Laura Esquivel discusses her homeland of Mexico and her books. Esquivel believes that it is very healthy and liberating for readers when a book opens and closes with a weepy scene.
