Laura Esquivel Lecture on Thursday, September 13, 4-6 PM at Arizona State University
By Manuel de Jesús Hernández-G.
ASU Chicano/a Studies in Spanish/Spanish Program/SILC
As a world-renowned novelist, Laura Esquivel is living her dreams and perhaps surpassing them. About thirty years ago, she wrote the novel Como agua para chocolate (1989), which has been translated into 36 languages, including a version in English: Like Water for Chocolate.
Together, the original in Spanish and the translations have reached over 7,000,000 readers in the world. That is what has made possible for Esquivel to live past her original dreams of becoming a writer in her native Mexico.
Specifically, in the English-speaking world, Like Water for Chocolate has sold over 2,000,000 copies— surpassing perhaps sales of a previous Latin American bestseller: the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) by the Nobel-prize winner Gabriel García-Márquez, a Colombian.
Laura Esquivel
Via Magical Realism, Like Water for Chocolate examines many themes, among them, Revolution, woman’s daily life, intermarriage, patriarchy, sati-practice, matriarchy, family conflict, the effects of food on love, a daughter’s sacrifice to her mother’s welfare, and female independence.
Special Lecture on Writing a Trilogy
Arizona State University is lucky to have Laura Esquivel visit our campus.
On Thursday, September 13, 4-6 PM, she will offer a lecture entitled “The Trilogy Like Water Chocolate, Tita’s Journal, My Dark Past, a History that Transcends Physical and Territorial Borders through the Thread of Love’s Alchemy” in Armstrong Hall Room 101. The lecture will take us into the 28 years it took to complete the trilogy: an epic featuring several generations of free and passionate women who teach readers to overcome adversities.
On Friday, September 14, top writers from across Arizona, including novelist and poet Gary Keller, will pay tribute to Laura Esquivel in MU 230 Pima Room, 6-9:30 PM, in the form of reading their creative and critical texts. Afterward, Laura Esquivel will address the texts read before her.
The Trilogy’s Achievements and Quest
Regarding Like Water for Chocolate, critic Elizabeth M. Willingham holds that the novel “created a single-author economic boom, unprecedented in Mexican literature and film of any period by any author” and “went into second and third printings in the first year of its release and reached second place in sales in 1989” and “became Mexico’s ‘bestseller’ in 1990.”
The novel El Diario de Tita, or Tita’s Journal (2013), second in the trilogy, is an intimate dialogue that follows the steps of the De La Garza family, whose epic quest started in Like Water for Chocolate. Specifically, Tita’s Journal represents a space where the protagonist treasures her most intricate secrets, prepares new and untried recipes, and shares memories at risk of being lost. The novel, thus, turns into a sacred site where spiritual inspirations allow the reader to recover her or his own intimacy.
The last novel in the trilogy, Mi Negro Pasado (2017), or My Dark Past, continues to defend feminine interdependence and offers the best recipe against society’s current ills: rootlessness, obesity, and hollow consumerism. María, the protagonist, experiences her marriage’s end while facing an avalanche of racist and male chauvinist umbrages. Via reading Tita’s Journal, she discovers unsuspected family secrets and the human spirit’s ability to overcome all things thanks to the power in love’s alchemy. The latter, part of a Magical Realist worldview, transforms natural foods and produces feelings of belonging never before experienced.
Other Works by Laura Esquivel and the Critics
Researchers have written on Laura Esquivel’s other works.
Regarding Esquivel’s second novel, La Ley del Amor / The Law of Love (1995), critic Lydia H. Rodríguez describes it as a “narrative [that] deconstructs the present to create a twenty-third century where remarkable invention and familiar elements populate a gymnastically-paced text” whose “conflicts … set the Law of Love (as a cosmic philosophy) in motion.”
In the case of Malinche: Novela / Malinche: A Novel (2006), Ryan Long holds that it “reflects upon the diverse and unpredictable revisions that [Malinalli / La Malinche’s] mythical identity has undergone continuously since the period of the Conquest[,] … seek[ing] a middle ground between Malinalli’s autonomy and Malinche’s predetermination.”
Laura Esquivel also has a collection of short stories entitled Íntimas Suculencias (1998) whose version in English is Between Two Fires: Intimate Writings on Life, Love, Food, and Flavor.
Lastly, her writings include an essay collection entitled El Libro de las Emociones, or The Book of Emotions, which still needs a translator to make it available in the English language.
Major critical studies include books that compare Laura Esquivel’s literary works with those of other major Latin American writers. For example, there are: Bodies and Texts: Configurations of Identity in the Works of Griselda Gambaro, Albalucía Angel, and Laura Esquivel (2003) by Claire Taylor and Poética de la Hibridez en la Literatura Mexicana Posmodernista (2014; Hybrid Poetics in Postmodernist Mexican Literature) by Nicolás Balutet.
Laura Esquivel ASU Visit, Its Sponsors
Arizona State University is lucky to have Laura Esquivel visit the Valley of the Sun, specifically Chandler-Gilbert Community College (CGCC) and Arizona State University at Tempe. Among the sponsors making possible her visit, we have: The Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing (VGPCCW), Chandler-Gilbert Community College, the journal Chasqui, the Hispanic Research Center (HRC), MEChA, Peregrinos y Sus Letras, El Concilio, the School of Transborder Studies (STS), and the School of International Letters and Cultures (SILC).
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