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Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community

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If you agree that magical realism is a world-wide phenomenon, rather than a mode limited to Latin America, this is the text for you. It achieves a balance between the history and the critical application of magical realism, and it covers magical realist texts that are neither time- nor geography-bound. Best of all, it will lead you on a wonderful search for new works. While you might not agree that all the texts mentioned can actually be classified as "magical realism," you will learn how subjectively the term is appropriated in modern criticism. When you finish this book, you invariably have arrived at a much clearer definition of magical realism for your personal application of the term.

Dr. Zamora was my professor at the University of Houston and this text is wonderfully anthologized to bring the reader into the world of magical realism. The world of magical realism is not questioned or fabricated, but co-existing with us. The boundaries of what is real and what is not is blurred. Texts that question the plausibility of events is not magical realism, rather it is fantasy. For instance, Harry Potter series is magical and wonderful in its tales but the world is oblivious to their existence. No one questions or wonders how it is possible that there is an old man with enormous wings, but instead wonder what he is, an angel or a man (Gabriel Garcia Marquez's short story "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings". This book is seminal in the introduction and collection of essays covering magical realism and why it chooses this message of delivery.

I am hooked on magical realism, or as Marquez terms it for himself "social realism", since it is fascinating that these postcolonial writers use magical realism to convey a history of blurred boundaries. I think many former colonized people will identify with the displacement they feel in being from neither here nor there, but from both here and there, a term known as hybridization.

This book is the best starting point for those who want to study magical realism. It covers the seminal texts that developed the theory and practice of magical realism, and also critical texts evaluating this aesthetic and literary category in relation to its origins, theory, history and communities.