Magical Realism [a] is an artistic or literary genre that conveys a realistic narrative combined with surreal elements of fantasy, and it's one of my favorite genres. It challenges binary oppositions like life and death and the pre-colonial past versus the post-industrial present. I love that as a writer, I can take our everyday world that surrounds us and add in a twist of something magical and unexplainable to it.
According to the almighty Wikipedia, there is some debate about the origins of the genre, though it seems like the roots of literary magical realism began in Latin American back in the 1920s. "Writers often traveled between their home country and European cultural hubs, such as Paris or Berlin, and were influenced by the art movement of the time. Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier and Venezuelan Arturo Uslar-Pietri, for example, were strongly influenced by European artistic movements, such as Surrealism, during their stays in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s [b]."
As you can see, there's a lot of history behind this particular genre. In Latin America in the 1940s, magical realism was a way to express a realistic mindset while creating an autonomous style of literature. There's even a number of articles and works detailing how magical realism has the ability to present the general Latin American resentment toward colonization through its construction of alienation, lack of descriptions, and the uncommon distortion of time, as those are some of the common characteristics that run through the genre. [c]
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One of the common themes of the magical realism genre is terror, where the idea of terror overwhelms the possibility of renewal. Time is often cyclical in this genre, where what happens once, often comes around again. Another popular and often complex theme is carnivalesque. "The concept of carnival celebrates the body, the senses, and the relations between humans. "Carnival" refers to cultural manifestations that take place in different related forms in North and South America, Europe, and the Caribbean, often including particular language and dress, as well as the presence of a madman, fool, or clown. In addition, people organize and participate in dance, music, or theater [d]."
Here are some of my favorite examples of Magical Realism, but there are a ton of great works out there in the genre, so definitely make a search! Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, first published in 1937. Fair and long-legged, independent and articulate, Janie Crawford sets out to be her own person -- no mean feat for a black woman in the '30s. Janie's quest for identity takes her through three marriages and into a journey back to her roots.
