Josefita “Tita” De la Garza, the youngest of three sisters, is the protagonist of Like Water for Chocolate. The novel opens with Tita’s dramatic birth in the kitchen of a ranch in Mexico, where she lives with her mother—Mama Elena—and two older sisters—Gertrudis and Rosaura. This birth proves prophetic, as food and cooking become important parts of her life. Each chapter begins with one of Tita’s recipes preserved in a cookbook—which connect her to both the past and present. Despite her love of cooking, sadness permeates her life. She is the victim of a harsh family tradition, cursed to forgo love and marriage to care for her mother. When Tita falls in love with her neighbor Pedro and he asks for her hand in marriage, Mama Elena refuses and offers Rosaura as a wife instead. Tita spends the next 20 years of her life rebelling against her domineering mother, in search of true love, independence, and the meaning of life. She finds the answers to most of life’s questions in preparing meals to nourish those she loves.

The title of the novel is the English translation of the Spanish phrase “como agua para chocolate”—an

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