Still from Pan’s Labyrinth
I love magical realism.
I think I read my first
magical realism book in middle school. I got “Green Angel” by Alice Hoffman
from my sister’s bookshelf and ended up crying because of how much it lingered
with me. My heart ached not only for the characters, but the beauty created in
their sorrows. I didn’t know what magical realism was, but I couldn’t get the
writing out of my head.
If I were in a magical
realism book, it would be obvious that my life was all falling together for me
to become a total MR nerd. Without knowing, I was drawn to the genre in so many
forms of media. “Pan’s Labyrinth” is one of my favorite movies, partially
because I can’t explain it. I don’t understand the world completely, so I keep
learning more about the bizarre world director Guillermo del Toro created. I
love not completely knowing, because then I continue to want more. Rule #1 of
writing: don’t give the reader everything.
After discovering this
“weird in-between fantasy and real” was a common theme, I started researching
the actual term.
I had two questions:
“What’s magical
realism?”
And
“Where can I get more?”
Art by Tomek Setowski
I read what I believe
was my second magical realism book, The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava
Lavender by Leslye Walton, after I graduated high school, and discovered
the term “magical realism” for the first time. I found so much vulnerability in
the poetic language, as if I were being shown the deepest secrets of the
author’s mind through their words. I felt intimate with the world they found in
this genre. I was one of the only people in my course who liked Bless Me
Ultima (my third known encounter with MR); the majority of the class argued
that it was “too weird” and “didn’t make sense”, while I argued this suspension
of reality is what we search for in literature.
My next encounter with
magical realism was in graduate my class Theorizing Queer Adolescent Literature
when we read “When the Moon Was Ours” by Anna-Marie McLemore, a book about a
young girl with roses growing out of her wrists, and (spoilers!) a young trans boy who eventually is transformed into the
body he always desired, and all I wanted was for that to be true. I wanted to
see this beauty in real life. My heart strings were tugged, and my mind begged
for more. At this point, I knew I loved magical realism. I love the suspension
of reality, the focus on the beauty of language. Most of all though, I loved
the magic.
At this point, I
started researching more books in the genre.
Falling into Gabriel García
Márquez showed me an inkling of why I love it. First, before
knowing about the background, I was just immediately drawn to the beautiful
language.
Although I fell in love first and foremost with the actual
language and books of magical realism, there was more that drew me to it. I
loved learning of the connection between magical realism and Spain. I am
Spanish, but not super connected to my culture; my Spanish grandmother lives
across the country, I refused to learn Spanish until tenth grade, and let’s be
honest: I don’t “look Spanish” according to people, (or stereotypically Spanish, which is
another issue on its own) and my love of magical realism has been questioned
because of that. This made me think more about why I love it.
Hearing inklings of my family’s journey
moving to America from Spain captivated me, and I saw this genre as a tiny way
to be more connected to my culture across the ocean. I felt transported.
I read “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by the king of
magical realism, Gabriel García Márquez. While I was carrying the book around,
my mom told me it was her favorite book, and reading it made me feel a little
bit closer to her as well. Everything was just falling together. Finally, I
started researching the actual genre of magical realism, also known as magic
realism, marvelous realism, or fabulism.
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, magical realism is
a “chiefly Latin-American narrative
strategy that is characterized by the matter-of-fact inclusion of fantastic or
mythical elements into seemingly realistic fiction”. Although
Latin-American, its roots are in Germany, and the term “magic/magical realism”
was first used by German photographer, art historian, and art critic Franz Roh
in 1925 (Slemon, 9). Although it is most popular in literature, it can be found
in any form of art: paintings, movies, et cetera.
As Maggie Ann Bowers
beautifully puts it in “Magic(al) Realism”, the genre “magic realism” is “the
concept of the ‘mystery [that] does not descend to the represented world, but
rather hides and palpitates behind it” while “magical realism” is “commingling
of the improbable and the mundane” (Bowers, 74). I love this mystery that doesn’t need to be explained. I’m
okay with it hiding and never truly being discovered.
There is some contestation whether the term “magic
realism” should only apply to Latinx authors, but the issue in this requires
each author to disclose their identity, which if they want to is great, but I
really think that’s another issue in this: a policing of the
genre, by all identities. This policing forces some authors to validate their
writing and divulge potentially personal information, which for some is
perfectly fine, but in general, I think that’s pretty weird to insist upon.
Why is their
background your business?
For some authors, they don’t want their identity to be
central to the reading of the novel, or simply they don't want it as a public fact in general, and that
should be respected. Varying identities in authorship is amazing, and something
I would love to see more of, but an author, like myself writing this blog,
should not have to immediately preface their work with their identity. But I do.
Nonetheless, I still love the genre, and writing about
it.
My journey in this genre has helped me discover more about
my family, myself, and the world.
Magical realism for me has
become an escape from the world. In times where I felt like life didn’t make
sense, everything fell together in this genre, because things didn’t have to
follow the logic of our world. When life didn’t make sense, when I stared at
the hate in our world, I wanted just a glimpse of beauty. Beauty was found in
times of hate and oppression in these books.
Magical realism is not
everyone’s cup of tea, but I want to emphasize something: It is for everyone,
no matter their background. I think everyone should at least try it, and I
think those of any age or identity should at least experience it once. If you
love it, read about it, research it, honor the background and roots of it. It
is not only beautiful; it is necessary to be accessible to the world. The
whole world. For some, it can be an escape, an exploration. A reader can escape
this world and explore another one more fantastical, more beautiful, more
magical. A world like in When the Moon
Was Ours where flowers grow from wrists and a trans boy born in the body he
doesn’t align with can have the body he always should have had with a drink of
a potion. A world like that.
There’s something so
beautiful about that. The possibility.
Magical realism is full of possibility.
For me, reading magical
realism is a reparation of some of the darkness in life, by seeing that
reparation happen in books. This can be seen in When the Moon Was Ours,
when a trans boy can magically
transform to have the body he always desired. Magical realism
brings light to my world, and I think it can bring light to others. This escape
that I found, this suspension of disbelief, became a way of coping, because for
a little while during my reading, I could believe that anything was possible.
I was right.
Anything is possible. It doesn’t matter if that anything
is in a book, because a book is real to me.
-SS
Sources:
“Magic Realism.” ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA, https://www.britannica.com/art/magic-realism.
Slemon, Stephen. Magic realism as post-colonial discourse Archived 2018-04-25 at the Wayback Machine. In: Canadian Literature #116 (Spring
1988),pp. 9-24, p. 9 http://canlit.ca/canlitmedia/canlit.ca/pdfs/articles/canlit116-Magic(Slemon).pdf
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