ABSTRACT
I had not set foot outside the airport yet when my mom took a long look at me and embraced me, saying the loving words that only a mother could blurt out like that, in cold blood: “Mija, what’s happened to you? You’re so fat!” Gloria, my mom-who, for the record, is not that thin herself-could hardly wait to begin fixing me. It was late May and I was coming back to my country, Ecuador, after having eaten my way through the comprehensive doctoral exams, the oral defense of my dissertation proposal in comparative literature, and a painful breakup with the man who, I had convinced myself, was going to stay with me for the long run.
