Laura Esquivel: 1951 (?)—: Novelist

The same innovative spirit with regard to form was evident in Esquivel's next book, the nonfiction Between Two Fires (Intimas suculencias), an essay collection, again illustrated with drawings, that ranged from philosophy to culinary meditations in the vein of Like Water for Chocolate. A theme running through these writings was Esquivel's idea of the New Man, who "will give equal value to production and reproduction, to reason and emotion, to the intimate and the public, to the material and the spiritual" All of Esquivel's writings have unfolded against a backdrop of the changing relationships between men and women in Mexican society, and the same was true of her 2001 release Swift as Desire, (Tan veloz como el deseo).

That book, which Library Journal called "a welcome improvement over the New Age theme of its not-so-successful predecessor," depicted (as did Like Water for Chocolate) a frustrated love affair. Its narrator Lluvia investigates the dissolution of the marriage of her parents after her father, a Maya-descended telegraph operator who can sense the electrical life force present in others, becomes enmeshed in a game of chance that derails his marriage. Clearly Laura Esquivel had many more stories to tell of a changing Mexico in which women were in the process of reconnecting with ancient wisdom.