A Place at the Table: Response

I always thought that I struggled with paying for my groceries and I was feeling a little hungry from time-to-time because I’m in college and that’s what’s expected.
Everyone knows that I’m busy all day and all night and working is hard to do.
That leaves me with a really tough question:

Does that give me a hall pass to feel hopeless?

Today, I grabbed a friend of mine and went to the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in downtown Kalamazoo to watch a film called A Place at the Table. It was a documentary that lasted about an hour and a half long.
The film covered a plethora of different topics from food inequality, food justice, welfare issues, political issues, etc.
As I’m watching, I’m starving.
I got up this morning at about 8:00 to walk the 2 miles to campus to start my day.

I hadn’t been able to feed myself all day… but even if I did get a chance to grab something to eat before I headed out the door what would it have been?

One bowl of cereal to last me for 9 to maybe 12 hours or more?
Then what? Instant pasta, bread, protein mix and spaghetti noodles inhabit my pantry.
I’m watching this film as people place orders for deep fried food, cheeseburgers, popcorn and fries.

I look over and shake my head… How ironic is it that we’re watching a documentary about people starving, food inequity and national hunger and just 40 feet away from me, some fat bastard is chowing down on his hamburger.

Then the realization slaps me across the face.

Am I in this category? Am I food insecure?
Sure, I have money in the bank and food in the cupboard but not much… and there are times I have gone without eating dinner to help me save money or save food.

I don’t think I’m food insecure and I don’t think I’m in as nearly as a difficult situation as the people featured in this documentary… though some days, I feel their pain… both physically and emotionally. I definitely know where my next meal will come from, but it still isn't easy...

But then again, whoever said this was easy for average Americans. 

Like Water for Chocolate: Ending

During the second half of the book, the dramatic action intensifies. Pedro ends up moving to San Antonio with his wife. Eventually, Tita’s work ethic declines as her despair takes over. She neglects the routine that Mama Elena has established, even going as far as having the water boiling hot and making her shirt wrinkled. Mama Elena is very picky about how she wants her chores done, and since she dislikes Tita, she always finds something to pick on her about. However, Tita’s newborn nephew, Roberto, dies from being unable to drink anything but his Aunt’s breast milk. Tita becomes incredibly depressed and Mama Elena comes and strikes her with a wooden spoon and tells her essentially to get over it. Mama Elena sends Tita to a dovecote where she becomes so beside herself with grief that Mama Elena had her sent to an insane asylum. This is the first time we see Tita stand up for herself, since the reason why Mama Elena struck her with the wooden spoon is because Tita had accused Mama Elena of Roberto’s death. The next chapter diverts from the typical recipes we see at the beginning of each chapter. At the beginning of one chapter, she depicts the outline for the ingredients of matches. In this chapter, she meets a man named John and they hit it off. He shares the recipe to matches, describing that a fire is within each person. Since she’s unwilling to speak, John asks her to write on the wall to communicate with him, she writes on t

Here, Tita asserts herself again, a symbol of her growing inner strength.
In the end, Pedro and Tita are able to express their true love for each other… I saw that one coming because no good book would have ended without true love coming to make a comeback.  

he wall, “Because I don’t want to.”

Like Water for Chocolate: Part II

Quale in Rose Petal Sauce as described in Chapter 3

The next 50 pages of this book are absolutely bizarre but in almost a romantic way.
Her lover, Pedro, ends up marrying her sister despite the fact that they both are in love with each other. In this chapter, she’s making a dish out of rose petals, which I believe are symbolic for her love to him. After receiving the flowers from Pedro, Tita doesn’t want to throw them out because they were so beautiful. She clutches them so hard to her chest that blood begins to appear from the thorns. Her other sister, Gertrudis, ends up running away with a soldier from the war. They meet by him following her sent, he finds her, swoops her up naked and takes her away.
I thought this part of the book was incredibly random, but somewhat beautiful in way. Tita’s mentor, Nacha, the ranch’s head cook, dies also, which kind of surprised me, because at first I thought she was poisioned by her wicked mother who forbids Tita from seeing or having a relationship with Pedro.

As I said earlier, each chapter shows us a recipe for a certain dish. 

I found a link for the dish that was described in Chapter 1.

I’m finding myself really intrigued with the storyline. I know in class we had discussed how it’s common to use elements of the supernatural and fantasy in Mexican literature, and I actually kind of like it, despite my viewpoints on it being bizarre.

There’s also a huge correlation between sexuality and foodin this novel. For example, the roses symbolically represent the love between Pedro and Tita. Instead of throwing them out, she makes a dish out of the roses. The book even goes into depth about the sexual desires the two have for each other, which, actually kind of caught me off guard at first, but it was also interesting to read and to see this side of the characters.

For some odd reason, the sexual angst in the characters in this novel is something I can connect to one of my favorite films of all time, American Beauty (1999).

This scene in particular is what I think of. 

It’s definitely starting to pick up in this novel!

Like Water for Chocolate: Part I

When I first began reading Laura Esquivel’s book, Like Water For Chocolate, I was afraid I had picked up the wrong book from the library and had accidentally gotten a cookbook. The story begins about preparation instructions on how to chop onions and how they can make people cry. The narrator goes into depth about how the onions used to always make her great-aunt, Tita, cry because she was so sensitive to them, even when she was still in the womb. This part reminds me of when I was young, my father would take time to cook a homemade meal from scratch and sob from chopping onions. The narrator continues to say that her unusual birth caused Tita to have a liking to the kitchen since the day she was born.
I particularly like the imagery in the part when the narrator is describing the man in the village plaza dismantling what it seems like balloon animals? ( I may be reading that part wrong)  She then goes on to talk about how the sausage must be fried over low heat to ensure that it cooks slowly without getting too brown. After it was done cooking, they would add ardines, omions, chopped chilies and ground oregano. This part reminds me of when I used to grill out with my dad back when I was still in middle school and elementary school. He used to grill out on a charcoal grill which made the smell of cooked meat, burnt charcoal and summer air that much more distinct in my mind. Something interesting that I realized was that sausage making on Mama Elena’s ranch would take an entire team and afternoon to prepare, and they had fun doing it, where as my dad could go to Meijer, grab a package of Hebrew National hot dogs and be on our way. I find it very interesting how each chapter gives you a recipe of something that has to do with the month and the chapter in which you are reading.

It seems like it’s going to be an interesting read!

The Hunger Games: The End

The final few chapters of The Hunger Games set up a great cliffhanger for the next book in the series, Catching Fire. I’m hoping that I can read the book first this time before seeing the movie.

One of the things that caught my attention was after Peeta and Katniss had won the games, Katniss was noticing how she didn’t recognize her reflection in the mirror and rather showed of exhaustion and lack of nutrition.

Page 348:

“Wild eyes, hollow cheeks, my hair in a tangled mat. Rabid. Feral. Mad. No wonder everyone is keeping a safe distance from me.”

This passage in the book reminded me of my 10^th grade English course when the class analyzed the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding. I specifically remember my teacher telling us about a similar passage in that book where the main character of the book was noticing how their hair, fingernails and skin looked as they were surviving on a deserted island.

Lord of the Flies explores similar themes to The Hunger Games like survival and food. The book also explores a certain system between good and evil between the children on the island, where as The Hunger Games surveyed the class system between rich and poor tributes based on their respective districts.

Another thing I noticed in the very last two chapters of the book was Katniss’ paranoia of being watched after the games were over. I feel like this is yet again, another connection to modern society.  I read online that the average person is photographed 300 times a day and with the recent hype about the Obama Administration and NSA listening in on people’s phone calls, I can only think about how disturbingly accurate Suzanne Collins was, once again at illustrating our own society in this dystopian society.

I was incredibly disappointed to see the relationship Peeta and Katniss had, fall apart on their way back to District 12. I guess I’ll have to read on to the other books to see how everything plays out.