Laura Esquivel

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Revolución interior al exterior: An Interview with Laura Esquivel

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SOURCE: “Revolución interior al exterior: An Interview with Laura Esquivel,” in Southwest Review, Vol. 79, No. 4, Autumn, 1994, pp. 592–607.

[In the following interview, which was conducted on July 25, 1993, Loewenstein and Esquivel discuss Como agua para chocolate and its impact on readers and on Esquivel herself.]

Author’s note: This interview was conducted on 25 July 1993 in the Spanish School at Middlebury College, where Laura Esquivel was a visiting lecturer. The interview was conducted in Spanish and translated into English by Anne Marie Wiseman.

[Loewenstein:] Laura, your book opens and closes with the weepy, onion scene, and surely you know you have people sobbing in their living rooms and in the movie theaters!

[Esquivel:] That’s true. I think that’s because I am a cry-baby! I think it’s very healthy and it’s liberating for your emotions.

My understanding is that your book has been used by psychotherapists so their patients could access their tears. This is quite a twist on the tearjerker! Do you like the fact that your book is being used in this way?

Aii si como No! Yes, I really like this idea, especially in mother-daughter relationships. One of the therapists even told me that she had been using Como Agua Para Chocolate during various therapy sessions, and that the images of the book were useful to both mother and daughter in dealing with mother-daughter issues.

How’s that?

For example, they had been using scenes from Como Agua Para Chocolate as a frame of reference for their own personal issues, and I just loved it that one day they used the book so much during their therapy sessions, that the images were so useful, that one of them said to the other, “Listen, I am afraid my box of matches is getting wet”—and of course the other knew exactly what she was referring to. And I, of course, find this very touching and very beautiful that my book could be used as such a vehicle.

Yes, this is very interesting! Here in the States, psychotherapy—all this talk of discovering our childhood wounds, open discussions on incest—we’re undergoing some sort of, well I don’t want to call it a movement, I guess I’d say there’s some sort of momentum, a public forum for intimate issues that is resulting in a television talk show phenomenon. Is anything like this happening in Mexico?

No, not really. Mexicans really don’t express their intimate problems—this seems to be a consequence of the conquest. One has to keep up a false front even though inside we feel the opposite. It’s very rare that someone is capable of discussing openly what he is really feeling inside. In Mexico people really don’t understand this kind of expression, these problems of talk shows.

I guess I’m not too surprised! Does it seem very weird to you?

Yes.

I can imagine! I imagine the whole world must feel that way about us. It’s as if we are a nation crying together. Suddenly everyone is watching talk shows. There are at least five hours to talk shows every day on television.

But, on the other hand, who is going to listen to us? They turn to the television, where there are millions of people out there listening to your problems, because there is no one listening to them in their own worlds—there is nobody close at hand to listen to them.

I guess you could say the talk show is our onion.

I understand you really felt sadness and fear as you watched your daughter substitute the hypnotic power of a hearth fire for that of the television; that you felt the impact of your daughter no longer paying any attention to you.

Yes, the example that you cite—I use it more as a metaphor than as the literal truth, but I used this metaphor to say that what’s happening in Mexico City and in most of the industrialized countries is the phenomenon where people no longer get together to tell stories and as a consequence the memory of the tribe is disappearing. This sort of transmission is broken down. Instead, parents are going out to make a living, and couples leave the education of their children to the television, which I personally consider a disaster. And so this is what I was referring to. We see more and more children spending hour upon hour in front of the television and it has become the primary medium of their education.

In your book you present a family hierarchy quite differently—I might say the inverse of the classical paradigm of the family power structure. The mother is portrayed as brutal and dominant, the men appear gentle. Why did you choose to portray Mama Elena as you did?

I chose the mother to represent this hierarchy that you speak of. As the head of the family, she transmits the tradition, because I find it extremely important that the mother is the one who transmits traditions and values to the children. Some people think of the mother, Elena, as being a repressive figure, but instead I see the mother as being equal to the masculine world and masculine repression, not feminine. Mama Elena is the one who wants to impose norms and a certain social organization, and I see her as the rational part of things.

Is that why it’s such a hyper-masculine role?

I do not represent the mother as a feminine figure, and I don’t see her as a castrator—I mean she is not one woman castrating another woman. Rather, I see her as the norm or the world of the masculine, whereas the feminine world I would portray as being that of intimacy, of life, reproduction, and of the earth. I would represent the masculine world as that outside of intimacy, life, and earth. Mama Elena is a castrating woman because she is a product of a castrating society. She is also a victim of repression but with all her strength she was unable to rebel against tradition. Tita, of course, did. I wanted the three sisters to represent three different attitudes: Gertrudis represents the first stage of feminism, breaking away, total sexual liberation, in fact a masculinization. She goes out and becomes a part of the revolution. She becomes a general, she participates in the public phase of the revolution, she kills people. Tita makes her own revolution in the family environment. In the course of years we can see how the public revolution degenerated. Tita’s revolution, however, achieved a new generation of women. Esperanza, who represents our collective hope, was going to the university to study, she was going to have it all, including respect for the family, for the kitchen. She represents balance in the new generation; she would balance her home life and her outside life. Rosaura of course didn’t want anything at all to change, but all that repression and keeping things inside made her feel rotten.

Yes, and Rosaura’s rottenness, her flatulence and the like, triggered all sorts of uncomfortable laughter in the movie theater. And would you set the record straight, is there in fact a tradition of the youngest daughter taking on the caretaker duties of the mother?

No, I invented this.

Apparently you did so very convincingly, because I’ve heard all sorts of stories that you were indeed basing your novel upon a longstanding tradition.

Of course it has happened and it does happen, but in this particular story I made it up.

The relationship between mother and daughter has been at the heart of much feminine discourse, and your book opens the door to so much discussion, My impression is that the role you have created for Tita is that of “the other woman” as heroine. In a way I perceive Tita as almost having been assigned a dual role not only as the other woman but possibly as her mother’s spouse, destined to be her caretaker. Is this perception accurate?

For me, actually, the mother and Rosaura represent the same thing. Rosaura accepts society and doesn’t want any changes in the traditions. Whereas Tita has the link with Pedro. They have a powerful love relationship; they have established a link that is, in fact, interrupted first by the mother then later by Rosaura. So Rosaura and the mother in effect do the same thing, that is interrupt what links Tita to Pedro. Rosaura, in fact, should be considered the one who commits an unfaithful act, even though she’s Pedro’s official spouse.

Matriphobia is a term being tossed about these days and your powerful description in your novel of the captain so terrified of Mama Elena raises interesting questions. Do you think that one’s mother can exercise such power?

I do think the mother has the power in the family.

Why is the mother not allowing her daughter to blossom? You say Mama Elena is “killing her a little at a time.”

Mama Elena transforms herself into a repressor because she herself was repressed, they did not let her follow her heart. She loved a mulatto, which was against the social protocol; to love a mulatto was strictly forbidden and instead of breaking the rules, as Tita did, Mama Elena conforms and lives her life in frustration and bitterness. And so she in turn passes down the tradition—she forbids Tita to love.

Do you think that in our parents’ generation women and men have had to go through life without the soulful fulfillment of love? That they were stifled in the way you describe?

No, I don’t think quite in this way, but there are other sorts of limitations. Almost always there is a series of norms to which we have to adjust our desires, and in any given moment though we may feel a strong attraction for someone, there are rules and norms that we have to respect. But everyone always has another possibility of doing as one chooses, of breaking the rules, of transgressing them.

Like Tita?

Yes, Tita is completely a transgressor. This possibility exists in every one of us and we must decide if we accept or don’t accept it, and how much we will go against ourselves to accept these rules.

I see. Yes, it’s a universal dilemma. I’m interested in how personal experiences helped form your book. You worked with children, as a teacher, and you were involved with a children’s televised theatrical production. How does this work help you in your current work?

My previous work, especially with children, has influenced me a lot. I use this experience to analyze things and set parameters for what’s important to me, especially the theater workshops.

What was your work with children?

I did theater workshops and liked it mostly because children can analyze and try out things, children can rehearse. For example, they can project what they would like to be or how the world could be, as a transformation. They can see not how the world is but how the child would like it to be. I feel that’s very important as a means of communication. I believe profoundly in education via art for the healthy development and education of children, especially at a young age. It was almost by necessity that I went into writing. Very few people write for children so there was never enough material. I started to study theater and had a weekly series for which I was always writing. Then I started with screenplays and now the novel. I miss the children very much.

What was your own family like?

It was a large family. In my mother’s family there were twelve people and in my father’s family there were twelve people too, so, as you can see, it was an enormous family, and now we’re such a large family that we really can’t do family get-togethers very well because there are too many of us. But in my own family there were four of us and I only have one child, so it’s a bit more manageable.

Your sense of humor is evident in your work, in your movie, and in your novel and also very present in your persona. Did someone in particular influence you and help cultivate your wit?

Yes, definitely—my father. My father’s got a great sense of humor and that sense of humor is really the way that we would communicate, always. He was always very present in my home.

So would he tell you stories?

Oh yes! Even to the point where I loved to get sick because he’d come and stay with me and invent stories with great characters. We played with him a lot. A long time ago he bought a reel-to-reel tape recorder and we would spend whole afternoons inventing stories and taping them, with all kinds of interesting sound effects and things …

Did your parents read to you? And did you read a lot with your daughter as a child?

Reading. No, nobody read stories—not ready-made stories. They just told them to me. They invented them and nothing was ready-made. And my daughter—I told her stories, I didn’t read her stories. My daughter also had a very close relationship with my father who, at that time, was retired. She played with him a lot and he told her lots of stories.

So is she also a storyteller?

As a child, my daughter did a poetry workshop and wrote poetry. She has some poems that are beautiful, that many people have wanted to publish, but she doesn’t want to—she’s very good, but as an adolescent she doesn’t write poetry any more. She says what she wrote, she did for herself.

How old is she?

She’s seventeen now.

Are there any other family traditions you passed on to your daughter, aside from storytelling?

The most important one is not to impose on the children that they have to help, that they have to do chores. We would rather the child feels his participation in a family as pleasurable. Sometimes my daughter helps me because she wants to, not because she has to.

Are there any mentors in your life?

No, not really. My father, but not any writers. There are lots of writers who have influenced me, for example, Juan Rulfo.

Do you keep diaries or journals?

No, I don’t.

Can you tell me a little bit about your day? Do you have a studio you go to? Do you work at home?

I work at home, which is why I think of writing as such a privileged profession. I can write a little bit, then go to the kitchen and cook a little bit, and come back and write a little bit. I’m at home and I love that. So yes, I do have a special place where I write. And I like to write early in the morning.

That’s right, you’d mentioned that, at—5:30 in the morning!

Yes, that is my time—as early as 5:30 in the morning and that’s when I can really sit down and write. Now I don’t have as much time. I love to go to market every day, cook every day, but now I can’t indulge in those pleasures as before. I have a lot of engagements, but I am trying to accept fewer and fewer interviews outside my home because they alter my rhythm of life and my inner peace too much.

I think you bring up a very important person in Mexican society with Nacha. Is there someone like that—a spiritual or miracle healer in your family’s life or in your own life as a child?

I do know a curandera but she was not in my family.

Was this an acquaintance or somebody important in your life?

Someone I knew. In my childhood home there were always natural cures. My mother, for example, had taken just one aspirin in all of her life, just one. And of course in the Mexican market, you can always get all kinds of herbs, herbal teas, and infusions and heal yourself with those.

I understand—I’ve also read that you make an altar wherever you go.

Wherever I work I put up an altar in the form of a square that comprises the four elements of nature. I use flowers in one corner to symbolize the earth, in another corner I burn incense to symbolize the air and, in another, I put a vessel of water, and then I burn a candle to symbolize fire.

Is the ritual you describe a traditional one?

Well, I’ll tell you. I greatly respect the sacred and ancient traditions and this seems to be one of the very oldest and most sacred traditions that exist. As an example, Rigoberta Menchú says that she does a salutation to the four winds—actually all indigenous peoples do that kind of salutation because they believe that the four winds form our world. The idea is that the activity you are going to perform on any given day through your work is going to change or alter the cosmos, that is, your activity will alter the equilibrium and so you must ask permission before beginning one’s daily routine.

So you do this ceremony in the morning?

Oh yes! In the morning very early one salutes the four elements, and so one maintains an altar with these symbols of respect for the universe. You must show respect, and that’s why I have my altar.

Do you meditate as well?

Yes, daily. Before writing I meditate and do my ceremony.

I would imagine that meditation helps your creativity.

Absolutely.

Does your family meditate?

I’m the only one.

For a first novel, yours has been a most impressive debut. Were you at all prepared for this?

Well it was almost magical, this success, and all the translations. … It was all so rapid.

I find this phenomenon to be very interesting. Don’t you think so?

Very interesting. And I really don’t understand yet how it all happened.

I find it all so strange in a way. It appears to me that Mexico in the nineties, especially for the past two years, has experienced sort of a Boom II, much like El Boom of the sixties. The Museum of Modern Art in New York had an extremely popular exhibit of Latin American artists this summer. When I went it was mobbed by New Yorkers and international tourists alike. Especially popular were the paintings by Frida Kahlo, who is being commercialized shamelessly on everything from T-shirts to key chains and, in Houston, the opera Frida about Kahlo’s life debuted this year, and of course your novel, a best seller, and your movie. I believe Como Agua Para Chocolate is the highest grossing foreign film this year.

Yes, I agree with you that this is a phenomenon. I think it has to do with that need to—well now, of course, this is my personal point of view, that all this popularity has to do with the need for equilibrium. All this has to do with the feminine aspect, with the intimate, all the manifestations of the equilibrium. When I think of that, what I mean by the feminine is earth or the sacred. I think that Mexican culture is very spiritual, and that currently we are going back to the earth and the sacred and to bring out the feminine side of the balance.

How? I find the phenomenon so extraordinary—that the Mexican film, novel, art, are simultaneously captivating the North American public. I mean there is a suddenness about this, there is something that seems to be happening especially in Mexico. Are you surprised by all this success?

Well I know what’s happening and I’m not surprised. If you want I’ll tell you but I don’t really want you to print it. These are personal beliefs and I prefer they remain as such.

O.K. Thanks for your confidence. I’ve been wondering about all this and am most curious to know what you think about it.

Are you familiar with Frida Kahlo’s work and can you comment on her influence in Mexican society?

I’m very familiar with her work and I will tell you what I think. I respect her very much and her paintings are everywhere. I admire her and I respect her but she affects me in a very specific way—that exultation of pain and frustration is very difficult for me. People love her very much in Mexico and she’s very much a symbol of feminism. She’s a social fighter. She was a very strong woman but, nevertheless, I also see a lot of very feminine aspects in her—her way of fixing herself, the way she dressed. They say it would always take her two hours to get ready to go anywhere—to get all fixed up—and that appeals to me, this feminine aspect. I also very much love how she wrote and how she spoke to Diego, and I find that very feminine.

You’re working on a book about the female Christ, Regina, and without giving anything away would you tell me more about this work?

Well, I also can’t tell you about that but I can tell you it has something to do with the events of 1968.

Does the public scrutiny after this very first novel affect your writing? I imagine the pressure must be uncomfortable.

There is a lot of pressure but I don’t let it affect me. My husband and a friend each said to me, “Don’t read any of the criticisms before you’ve started on your next work.” And I try to stick to that but, of course, I was writing all these other things in the meantime—a couple of scripts—and so I didn’t quite finish the new novel, but now it’s all structured and I’m set to go.

You were a screenwriter first before becoming a novelist. I wonder if you would talk about the different art forms. When you wrote the novel was it already being written through the eyes of a camera?

Yes, definitely. I see an image and then I explain it. So I imagine the situation and then I write about it so it’s very visual.

Was it hard to work with one’s own husband?

No. In work no. We seem to fight more outside of work!

Elena Poniatowska, a writer I admire so much, praised your book and believes you have written a kind of book that has not existed previously. It’s hard to imagine praise higher than this. Do you agree with her? What is there about your novel that you feel is new and different?

I think Elena Poniatowska specifically is referring to the location of the novel in the kitchen and, of course, the recipes and the vision of a woman. But what also called her attention to my book more than anything was the sense of humor.

I’m not sure I understand.

She says women didn’t used to write with a sense of humor but, rather, they would complain or protest, and so she sees the sense of humor in my novel as being something different and new.

Oh, I see. We have, of course, been discussing feminist issues. You’ve spoken publicly about our needing to have a new revolution, revolución interior al exterior. Can you speak more about this revolution?

Women didn’t go outside the home until my generation. We put our hopes in the public world. We thought the things worth fighting for were outside the home, not inside. We went outside to change that world and we were hoping that a New Man, with a capital M, was going to emerge from that world. But, of course, now we’re living in disillusionment because we’re realizing that this didn’t happen. Now we understand that the system and the progress that we established is, in fact, destroying us. Right now we’re seeing women in the work force and we’re seeing that the subsequent changes are altering and destroying our values. We see that all our efforts have turned around the economics of things—we’re looking to get money at all cost. And we fought against these things. But even ecology is affected by economics and terrible things are happening in the name of economics. Really, all hope is gone that a New Man will emerge, or if he does he isn’t going to be what we looked for. We wanted a New Man who would value things differently, who would value life, who would value every act in the home. We did not want the destruction of the public world, and in reaction to that, we’re turning back into the private world. What we’re finding is that our private world, our own homes, will remind us where we are from, where we are going, and who we are. This is why it’s so important to bring back our rituals and the ceremonies that connect us to ourselves, to our origins. We see that the New Man is the one in the home, and we’re hoping the New Man will be the result of the work of couples rather than just one side. The couple should each be able to transmit their values, not those of television.

I think, if I understand you correctly, that the new revolution is in a sense going backwards, back to our homes. Perhaps we couldn’t be on this path of returning home, and there could not be the notion of couples as true partners, without the journey that first led us, as you say, “outside.”

Yes, I agree. Exactly so. It was absolutely necessary to have won all the rights that we did earn, to leave the homes first before coming back.

What were you like when you were young? Did you burn your bra?

Well, when I was eighteen, nineteen, twenty years old—that was it. The conquests. You had to go out and conquer the streets and, of course, you also had to demonstrate your intellectual capacity—you had to fight for your rights.

Tell me how you were. What was Laura like during the sixties and seventies revolution?

Well, you can probably well imagine! I was pretty much a hippie. I was a vegetarian, gypsy-like. I liked to meditate and it’s curious because I was very much attracted to the possibility of change. For example, of course we weren’t allowed to wear pants in school, so we fought to be able to wear them. And we thought that was change. But, I tell you, in all of that I did sometimes forget some essential elements and that’s when I had to rediscover all that was happening in the home. And it was my own experiences that I wanted to transmit when I wrote Como Agua Para Chocolate. At that time, when I was young, as I’ve said, we had to go out in the street, we had to get our rights, we had to fight for our rights but in doing so we did lose something and that’s what we have to set straight now, we have to set it right, right now.

Do you think there is such a thing as woman’s literature?

I say there is. It is my point of view that there is a feminine and a masculine literature, but feminine literature does not have to be written by women. There are very good male authors who, to me, write feminine literature. I see the difference in the way they narrate and in what they narrate. Walter Benjamin made a great distinction between novelists and storytellers. A lot of these storytellers are actually producing feminine literature. Right now we are seeing a reemergence of storytelling to counteract the predominance of masculine literature. I am convinced that there is a difference. There are a lot of women who deny that and claim, in fact, that they don’t write so-called Feminine Literature. They say that they are not feminine writers. I don’t. On the contrary, I am very proud to be a woman writer. I really do believe in the difference between masculine and feminine energy. It’s like in dance, if someone asked whether you would rather be a male or a female dancer? I would rather dance on my toes and wear a tutu! I am definitely a female dancer. But the wonderful thing about dance is that there are male and female dancers. That is what makes dance beautiful.

Your sexual descriptions are erotic and uninhibited. Is it difficult or awkward for you to write about sexuality?

I have no problem writing about that.

Is there a double standard, do you think, for men and women in Mexico?

Yes, I think there is. Men can still do some things that women can’t, although I think things are changing, but there are still things that are O.K. for a man and not for a woman. For example, an older man can go out with a very young woman—this is quite acceptable, but if a woman who is forty years old goes with a man who is twenty-five, well … they can just kill her!

I don’t think it’s all that different here, well … unless she is very rich and then it’s O.K.!

You bring together eroticism and death in your book. Why does Pedro have to die at the moment of orgasm? What is your connection between death and passion?

Well that’s what they always talk about. They call an orgasm a kind of dying, but the reason I had him die like that is because there’s not really a place in the world for their kind of love.

Is the love too perfect?

Yes. It’s too perfect and too intense to live in this plane of existence, and so dying was a way in which they could remain together. I just wanted them to be together and that’s why I wrote it that way.

You do bring up the issue of family secrets—breaking one of the strictest sexual taboos—with the mulatto. Do those taboos still exist in Mexican culture?

No, that’s not really a taboo for us. We do have other sorts of problems with racism, but I wanted him to represent what is socially unacceptable, and for Mama Elena as well, this is not permitted. As strong a woman as she is, she does not have the force to go against the rules.

You refer to Carreño’s etiquette manual in Como Agua Para Chocolate. What is this exactly?

It’s a social rules manual from the nineteenth century. Now, of course, it’s funny and we laugh about it but that’s how society used to work. They are just the absurd norms of society: how to eat, how to act, how to greet. Everything!

So the manual underscores Mama Elena’s severity?

Sure! Now of course everything’s changed. They used to limit what you could do, and it had nothing to do with enjoying life. What’s funny is that the rules just keep changing.

You write of “Tita’s erotic posture in the kitchen”—I find this intriguing because you eroticize a place often associated with women’s subjugation, or another perspective might perhaps associate the kitchen with maternal nurturing, but in either extreme the kitchen would have no link to sexuality. Why did you choose the act of cooking food as an aphrodisiac?

For me the simple act of cooking is, in fact, an act of love, and in the kitchen this happens. Out of two things you make one thing, you mix the four elements, and out of the four elements you make one single thing, which, to me, is an act of love. Transmitting your emotions intensifies it all the more.

Intensifies?

The act of love. And I am convinced that cooking to me is an inversion of the couple’s sexual role. This nurturing that our essence carries, and that our love carries and all these emotions, where we are all contained—this is how the woman can, in fact, penetrate the man, this is how it converts, and the man is the passive one, he receives this, and for me it is very intense and very erotic.

Does your husband cook?

No, are you kidding? My daughter cooks, but only what she likes to eat.

I love what you say about smells—that life would be nicer if we could carry these smells within ourselves. In your childhood home, what are the smells that you remember?

My grandmother’s kitchen had a very particular aroma and my mother’s also has a very special smell to it. Especially the smell of freshly made bread, and all sorts of things that she would be cooking. It was always so comforting and pleasant to me.

Oh how nice! For me whenever I smell rosemary I think of my grandmother, who would chop up fresh rosemary for one of my favorite dishes: Klöβe.

Ah … In my own kitchen mostly what you can smell is garlic, definitely, and onion, of course, also lots of very aromatic herbs and fruit.

I know you’ve been asked this a hundred times but what are some of your personal favorite recipes?

Yes, I’ve been asked that and my favorite is el mole.

What is the significance of the title? Does chocolate convey something special to you?

We used to have hot chocolate with water, before the Spaniards came, because we didn’t have cows. You had to wait until the water was just about to boil. That was the appropriate moment to make the chocolate. That is where the saying comes from. When someone is about to explode, we say that person is “like water for chocolate.”

Laura, could you please set the record straight on something? In a particularly irate review, a detractor lists all the foods that he claims (and the critic is Hispanic) are improbable foods in Northern Coahuila, along with a list of why we are deceived by your book. Rosca de Reyes, Chiles in Nogales, Jumiles …

Absolutely! These are true recipes! No, he is not correct! I use recipes that are from all over Mexico. I think no Mexican family cooking is from one single cooking zone. In my home, cooking is very eclectic. It’s not just from one place. What I wanted to show was Mexican cuisine from all over the country, not just of northern Mexico, so I put in recipes from the south, central, really from all over the place.

You’ve said food affects our psyche. In the United States we’ve replaced the wooden spoon with scissors to cut open boxes of microwave fare. Has cooking changed notably in Mexico?

Yes, cooking has changed in Mexico too, but of course not as much as it has here in the United States. And I think it’s emblematic of the rhythm of modern life. Sometimes you just can’t help it, you’re in a hurry and you have to do it. But I still think that through food we are connected, or centered, and so if you’re connecting with a microwave pouch, you’re connecting with the factory, where the human element is not present. This is terrible, this causes a malnutrition of the soul in a formidable way.

I do recall reading that you feel cooking is a reminder of perceived and unperceived forces.

Yes, I feel this is very true. I love to tell the following Zen story in the kitchen. It’s about three men laying brick. The first one was asked, “What are you doing?” and he answered, “I’m laying bricks.” The second one was asked, “What are you doing?” and he said, “I’m putting up a wall.” The third one was asked, “What are you doing?” and he answered, “I’m building a cathedral.” If we were to translate this to the kitchen and we were to ask the first woman, “What are you doing?” she would answer, “Nothing.” Because on this scale of values, cooking is nothing. The second one when asked “What are you doing?” would answer, “I’m cooking a meal for my family.” And the third woman when asked, “What are you doing?” would answer, “I am holding a ceremony of union with the universe and it is an act of love.” I believe that when we give it the importance it deserves, everything changes. At that moment men are going to want to participate in the ceremony, a ritual that will connect us back to the earth. I know it’s difficult, but we have to look for opportunities to make eating into an act of love.

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Hispanic American Women Writers' Novel Recipes and Laura Esquivel's Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate)