Laura Esquivel

Mexican writer and politician. She is internationally known for her work "Como agua para chocolate" published in 1989, translated into more than 30 languages. From 2008 to 2011 she held the position of General Director of Culture in Coyoacán, Mexico City. From 2015 to 2018, she was a federal Representative for the Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional (Morena), the party created by former presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a party she represented in the commissions of Science and Technology, Culture and Cinematography, and Environment and Natural Resources.

She studied Theater and Dramatic Creation at the Centro de Arte Dramático A.C. (CADAC), specializing in Theater and Dramatic Creation. (CADAC) specializing in Children's Theater. She is a graduate in Preschool Education (1966-1968), instructor of the Children's Theater and Literature Workshop (1977), instructor of the Tlaxcala and Oaxaca Script Consultant Workshop (1998 - 2002) and Instructor of the Writing Laboratory Workshop in Oaxaca, Michoacán and Spain (1999).

Between 1970 and 1980 she wrote children's programs for Mexican television, and in 1983, she founded the Centro de Invención Permanente, made up of artistic workshops for children, and assumed its technical direction.

Her television work gave her the stimulus to devote herself to writing screenplays for film. It was then that she decided to write her first novel. "Como agua para chocolate" (Like water for chocolate) was a great commercial success. The film version would be directed by Alfonso Arau Quirós, to whom she was married from 1975 to 1995.

In this novel, she uses magical realism, proclaims the importance of the kitchen as the most important part of the home, and promotes personal and family changes as a form of inner revolution.

In 1994 she was awarded the ABBY Award (American Booksellers Book of the Year), the first time this award was given to a foreign writer. In 2004 she received the Giussepe Acerbi Award from the University of Verona, Italy, for her novel Tan veloz como el deseo (As Fast as Desire). In 2008 she won the prize for the best audiobook in Spanish awarded by the Audio Publishers Association (APA), for Malinche, published in 2006, which includes a codex (illustrated by Jordi Castells).

In September 2011, in an interview on the occasion of his participation in the National Festival of the Arts in Argentina, he revealed that he set out to write the story of Jacobo Grinberg-Zylberbaum.

In 2014 she published A Lupita le gustaba planchar, which marks her first foray into crime novels and whose protagonist is an alcoholic policewoman, survivor of the death of her son and the abandonment of her husband who, throughout the story, becomes an anti-heroine, as she unravels the murder of her boss, the delegado (political boss) of Iztapalapa.

In May 2016 she published El diario de Tita, the sequel to Como agua para chocolate. Her latest work is the novel Mi negro pasado, published in November 2017, with which she completed the trilogy Como agua para chocolate.

Organised, caring and driven by duty the ESFJ personality type loves to contribute and remain constantly valued, productive, busy and liked. The ESFJ has an action-orientation that they will channel into people, helping and finding practical solutions to people issues and they'll work hard at making this happen as they are naturally oriented to the needs of those around them. Whilst the ESFJ wants everyone to feel valued, they will also want to feel part of the group themselves - they need to feel included. If someone is hurting, the ESFJ will be the first to respond.

The ESFJ character shares the same action-orientation of the ESTJ but with a people-based focus, they channel their drive, energy and practical nature into helping people. Driven by a sense of duty they are the cooperative, helpful, sympathetic and personable pragmatists, disliking anything ethereal or woolly as they prefer practical solutions to people issues, and they'll work hard at making this happen. Unlike the ESFP the ESFJ will want a plan and closure, they do not like loose ends or anything they perceive as sloppy or messy. As with most 'S's, they prefer the concrete, inhabiting a world of facts and the ‘here and now.’ Asking an ESFJ to sit and think things through or reflect before ‘doing’ is not easy as their natural propensity is for action; thinking is seen as a passive and useless activity. This means they will jump immediately into ‘sorting it all out,’ when at times if they’d taken a little longer to think they may have come up with a better solution. Organised, caring and driven by the known, routine comes naturally to the ESFJ who fear change as it is drags them out of the place where they feel they are strong and where they can contribute.

Conscientious and caring, the ESFJ will be good at follow-through and making sure the routine is taken care of, but may struggle with anything which appears complex, or which is perceived as not clearly getting the intended result or which causes conflict or disharmony. They value family links, friendships and tend to be slightly sentimental in their approach. Under pressure an ESFJ may become like the 'controlling parent,' smothering others in their attempt to provide support and believing that their way is best, becoming sensitive to any perceived criticism. Their values of ‘doing good’ and working hard to make sure things and people are taken care of are at the core of the ESFJ although they may at times try to instil these parental-style values in others, often using parental type words like "should," "ought" and "must." These are all said with a good heart and desire to help but the subjective nature of the ESFJ means that they may almost impose what they think is best in their desire for immediate practical help.

Being ‘F’s ESFJs may have trouble making more logical and factual decisions so driven are they by their values and wishing to maintain harmony, so their decisions will be primarily driven by the needs of those around them especially those close to them whom they feel a duty to ‘care for.’ Everything for the ESFJ becomes personalised and will be filtered through a more subjective ‘how do I feel about this person’ lens, rather than being objective and logical as a logical approach for the ESFJ is equated with being cold and harsh thus negating being helpful which is at the core of the ESFJ being. After a day interviewing I asked my ESFJ secretary to tell the successful candidate he’d got the job. “Was he the nicest?” she asked, “Did you like him best?" No issue of ‘suitability’ even crossed her mind! They tend also to have more of a ‘gate-post,’ binary mentality, seeing things in very black and white, ‘good or bad,’ ‘right or wrong,’ ‘nice or horrible.’ Being driven by feelings can also mean that the ESFJ gets hurt easily by any perceived or real criticism as everything is taken so personally, so factually and they can dwell on such criticism. Anything which appears complex or which has many shades of grey will be dismissed as it doesn’t conform to the ‘natural laws’ of ‘ESFJ common sense.’ They’ll want to jump in and help, which is why they were, according to their own values, ‘put on this earth.’