Like Water for Chocolate Themes

We are family, I got all my sisters with me. Family, la familia, the gang, whatever you want to call them, they're there for better or worse. In the case of the De la Garza clan, family is a major...

All you need is love. To love and have lost is better than to have never loved at all. We could go on and on with the sappy, mushy stuff, but we gotta wonder—is love really a source of joy or pai...

Let's talk about sex baby, let's talk about you and me…or, you know, not talk about it ever. Not too different from current times in the U.S. (abstinence only, anyone?), sex and sexual relations...

"Give me liverty, or give me death." For much of the novel, Tita is trying or longing to break free of the rule of Mama Elena. For many reasons, it takes a while for her to get off the ranch (many,...

From a very early age, Tita experiences a heavy dose of abuse from her mother. She is spanked, beaten, insulted, and berated numerous times throughout the novel. Despite this (or because of it), we...

Babies born on kitchen tables, quail and rose petals burning up sexual appetites, ox-tail soup for the mommy-battered soul; cooking and food is so much more than a remedy, so much more than a theme...

This is a man's world, and we're not surprised, what with a revolution in full swing and a pretty machismo culture. Of course, this is way back in the day. Nowadays in Mexico, men and women are equ...

Rules, rules, and more rules. It seems to us that living on a ranch in Mexico during the Revolution as a woman is no walk in thepark. Everything these people do and say is scrutinized and controlle...

Indians, mulattoes, and gringos, oh my. Although not always at the forefront, the theme of race is like a giant cactus in the room that nobody wants to talk about. We think it's worthy of note that...