This first book-length treatment of Laura Esquivel's fiction presents a lively and enlightening collection of essays on her four novels to date and the film version of Like Water for Chocolate, along with a comprehensive treatment of Esquivel's twenty years of contested critical reputation.<BR><BR>Elena Poniatowska Amor sets Esquivel's literary roots into a broad context of Mexican Letters, from contemporary feminist theatre to lyric poetry and the testimonial narrative. In conversation with Esquivel, Poniatowska elicits a telling view of men and food as parallels in the universe of the kitchen where the female acts of grinding, kneading, smoothing, stirring, timing, measuring - and so on - are organizing and sensual principles in the shared lives of men and women.<BR><BR>Other respected critics of Mexican literature, film, and culture provide fresh examinations of Esquivel's treatment of gendered roles in her fiction and her exploitation of character and plot conventions, some of which emerge from Latin American and Hollywood melodrama of the 1940s and 1950s. Wide-ranging essay contributions include "intra-historical" or feminist perspectives, and modes of science fiction. Specialists in Mexican culture and history, Medical Humanities, and Religious Studies provide enlightening readings of Esquivel's fictional milieus in the contexts of cultural geography, religious practice, and folk medicine.