Getting messy with Mexican food. On Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate.
Living in Malaysia, where the best food in the world is available in almost every street corner, the discussion of food is not to be taken lightly. Every Malaysian, regardless of religion or ethnicity knows that each of their dish tells a story. Some of the street food has been around for three generations, some for over a century with unchanged recipe. Esquivel understands this and infused what is a commonplace Mexican familty drama à la daytime telenovela to something that’s elevated to Michelin gourmand levels.
Like Water for Chocolate is not a heavy meal. At least, it is not a buffet like Les Miserables. Mexican cuisine is in focus here, but not the food that you’d know. There are no burritos, tacos or nachos, which for the average Mexican is usually an abomination, but instead we get quail, champandongo and the quintessential mole. The book is an education in Mexican cuisine and thus, Mexican culture and temperament.
I referenced Pujol because of this mole dish, and having remembered watching Chef’s Table in Netflix I had to rewatch it. I’d recommend doing that because it gives an indication of how complex and rich Mexican cuisine can be. In some ways, the style is similar to the Colombian Gabriel Garcia Marquez, with strong elements of magical realism and deadpan look of human relations, especially in the fabric of the family and lovers. The closest of his work to Like Water for Chocolate is Love in the Time of Cholera, but I prefer Esquivel’s work than Marquez’s.
The plight of the youngest daughter
I had no idea that in traditional Mexico, that it was the unshakeable duty of the youngest daughter to take care of the mother. She is not allowed to marry, as this will be a distraction of her caretaker role. So it’s a damn shame that in a family of three daughters with no paternal figure, Tita, the youngest, fell in love with Pedro in a party. Pedo, in turn, plans to ask for Tita’s hand in marriage.
However, this is an impossible situation as Tita’s mother Mama Elena strictly won’t allow it. She offered, instead, Tita’s elder sister Rosaura who Pedro would accept as a wife; his intention being that at least he would be within the proximity of Tita, his true beloved. But Mama Elena is smart to this, and with a hawklike eye she would deter each other from ever becoming too close. Tita, in her heartbreak, would prepare the couple’s wedding cake filled with her own tears which would cause everybody in the wedding to be sick with longing.
When Pedro and Rosaura moved to San Antonio with their infant son, Tita would be devastated as she had grown close to her nephew. Upon hearing the death of his nephew, Tita would blame the death on her mother, which causes a further rift between the two. Tita would be sent away to “cure” with Dr. John Brown who despite his more advanced age, fell in love with Tita. But Pedro would never have left Tita in her mind, and the two, like fated lovers would weave in and out each other’s lives.
Breaking the shackles of tradition
The Mexican and Latin American palate (at least in terms of literature) may not agree with mine. I have always had an issue with the prose and style of translated Latin American authors such as Marquez, LLosa or Azuela. There is a coldness to the language, even while something remarkable is being said. It is almost a jarring style of writing, and though I am not used to it, I perceive the beauty of it. So in a way, the problem is not the book’s or the translation’s and most likely mine.
It is comparable to preferring Italian over Thai food. I don’t actively seek for Thai food every day, but when I eat it I do enjoy it. And I did enjoy Like Water for Chocolate. To tie in with the food component, the structure of the book is split into twelve chapters, for each chapter was serialised and each one representing a dish, complete with the ingredients. The chapter would start with instructions on how to cook the dish before transitioning to the meat of the story.
But like a good meal with good ingredients, there are bits and pieces in the book that provide some exquisite bites. My favourite chapter was “Quail in Rose Petal Sauce” where Tita was unable to keep the roses that Pedro had given her and instead infused this as rose petal sauce into the quail that she would serve to her family. The victim was Tita’s other sister, Gertrudis who with the taste of the quail immediately ran out of the house naked, to the arms of a rebel, her body exuding the scent of the roses from the sauce she just had.
The dishes are the leitmotif, but also the anchor of each chapter. Each serve a different purpose, each triggers a different emotion to the characters and perhaps to us, as the readers. The chapter on the quail is lust and unbridled sensuality, the wedding cake is that of sorrow and longing, the chorizo that of resilience and survival. The relationship between food and human emotions and behaviour, I think, is not a field that has been widely studied, especially if we consider the method of preparation and the cultural significance. However, this is something that writers can explore and conjecture by the means of literature.
I don’t know if I were a Mexican reader whether this would also trigger a sense of nostalgia in me. Would the dishes mentioned in each chapter be something that my Mexican grandmother would have cooked? I suppose for us, as non-Mexican readers, we may have gaps missing in our context, even in the language as it is passed on through (the already excellent) English translation. What are we missing here as readers who don’t really have the full picture?
I know that this review is packed with reference of food, even though in the book it is a mere leitmotif — a mere pattern or ingredient to the overall menu. The meat of the book is the relationship between Tita and her mother, and thus the battle between passion and tradition. I have to say that Mama Elena is a bit of a cunt, though she has culture and tradition behind her to keep Tita unwed for her own selfish needs. I wonder whether it is a tradition that is still kept by Mexicans, or whether the youngest daughter can follow her own will to marry now.
When we have friction between passions and traditions, the thematic umbrella is that of the character’s own self-actualisation. There is no clear line between taking one path or the other. Tita, as much as she hated her mother, was not able to abandon her. Yet, it was not until she was able to spurn the ghost of her mother that she was free to choose to marry off her own will. And this message is the crux of the story, and one that deserves to be explored many times over: sometimes one must let go of culture and tradition in order to progress and develop oneself.
I have always had respected culture, sometimes with unquestionable blindness. But this is a faux pas which does not do anybody much good in the long run. Some archaic ways of thinking must really be placed in the shelf, and perhaps buried deep in the ground instead of being placed in a museum. On the other side of the coin, culture binds the family and social fabric, and this is a good thing. But as analytical beings, it is our duty to separate the good and the bad from the past, and to have this discourse continuously.
