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Postethnic Narrative Criticism: Magicorealism in Oscar 'Zeta' Acosta, Anna Castillo, Julie Dash, Hanif Kureishi, and Salman Rushdie

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This book can only be convincing to those who have no knowledge of the long and by now tedious debate concerning Magical Realism in the field of Latin American literature. What some reviewers call his "innovative" posture is actually based on one of the most conservative and oldest understandings of Magical Realism, Seymore Menton's, articulated in the 1960s. He basically skips over the latest and best criticism by Latin Americanists concerning Magical Realism. He brushes off complex and interesting arguments made by Alberto Moreiras in the space of one paragraph. There is no mention of Moses Valdez who also has written a serious scholarly essay on the topic. Aldama dismisses without confronting in any sustained way the monumental anthology on Magical Realism put out by Lois Parkinson Zamora in recent years. He creates the neologism "magicorealism" or "magicoreelism" (when talking about film) but gives no substantial critical reason for the creation of these terms; At least not one that coherently distinguishes it from any myriad of definitions already available and used when talking about the old term "Magical Realism". There is a lot of confusing argumentation and a lot of neat sounding words that may confuse and convince those who don't know any better of the "greatness" of his argument. However there is nothing here of any real substance. It is little more than a barely re-written dissertation (his dissertation was on a similar topic) that some how made it into press at UT Austin. For any one interested I direct them to Menton's monumental work on the topic, followed by Moreiras, and then the Parkinson Zamora anthology and Moses Valdez's article. All of these people are conversant in the topic, they write in a way that is, for the most part clear and interesting in terms of the theoretical debate.

This book is a must for serious scholars working on magic realism, postcolonialism, American multiethnic literature, and globalization. Aldama begins by offering a helpful overview of the critics who have observed and theorized magic realism (or magicorealism, as he dubs it). Even more usefully, he interrogates those theories, explains his own fresh take on the subject, and trains his critical lens specifically and in depth on a spectrum of magic realist works of fiction and film--some already canonical, some just beginning to come under academic scrutiny. Though written in a complex and theoretically sophisticated style, this book is appropriate for advanced undergraduates. A valuable contribution to an important field.

Book Description: Magical realism has become almost synonymous with Latin American fiction, but this way of representing the layered and often contradictory reality of the topsy-turvy, late-capitalist, globalizing world finds equally vivid expression in U.S. multiethnic and British postcolonial literature and film. Writers and filmmakers such as Oscar "Zeta" Acosta, Ana Castillo, Julie Dash, Hanif Kureishi, and Salman Rushdie have made brilliant use of magical realism to articulate the trauma of dislocation and the legacies of colonialism that people of color experience in the postcolonial, multiethnic world. This book seeks to redeem and refine the theory of magical realism in U.S. multiethnic and British postcolonial literature and film. The author engages in theoretically sophisticated readings of Ana Castillo's So Far from God, Oscar "Zeta" Acost's Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo, Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Shame, The Satanic Verses, and The Moor's Last Sigh, Julie Dash's Daughters of the Dust, and Stephen Frears and Hanif Kureishi's Sammy and Rosie Get Laid. Coining the term "magicorealism" to characterize these works, Aldama not only creates a postethnic critical methodology for enlarging the contact zone between the genres of novel, film, and autobiography, but also shatters the interpretive lens that traditionally confuses the transcription of the real world, where truth and falsity apply, with narrative modes governed by other criteria.

Reviews:
"In this exciting new book, Frederick Luis Aldama has done an outstanding job of remapping 'magical realism"--Werner Sollors, Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot Professor of English Literature and Professor of Afro-American Studies, Harvard University.

"Frederick Luis Aldama offers a vigorous revisionary perspective on postcolonial literature and, more specifically, on the much discussed phenomenon of magicorealism. He has a commanding knowledge of postcolonial theory, and he performs a welcome critical task in demonstrating how it tends to confuse the confines of the academy with the contours of the real world, textuality with ontology. Aldama himself is a political critic, but he sanely argues that the arena of any serious politics is the world of living people and not a text"--Robert Alter, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of California at Berkeley and author of Canon and Creativity.

"Providing a lucid and cogent critique of the tendency in contemporary criticism to ontologize "magical realism," a tendency that implicitly articulates a relatively simple mimetic relationship between "magical realism" and various postcolonial cultures, Frederick Aldama instead posits a theory of what he calls "rebellious mimetics" that introduces a complex aesthetic and political mediation in that relationship. In doing so, he weaves together a series of excellent analyses of novels and films by authors and artists as diverse as Salman Rushdie, Ana Castillio, Oscar Zeta Acosta, Julie Dash, and Hanif Kureishi. This is a very significant contribution to the study of this genre"--Abdul R. JanMohamed, Professor of English, University of California, Berkeley.

"In this insightful and forceful study of magical realism, Aldama successfully argues that a true postethnic and postcolonial criticism should not (con)fuse the world with the text. His commentaries on Castillo, Dash, Kureishi, Acosta, and Rushdie force the readers to see these artists' magicorealist works in a new light, thus revealing all of their splendid and contradictory complexities. Aldama's book is a must for anyone who wishes to understand the intricacies of magical realism and the vitality of this genre in contemporary European postcolonial and ethnic American literature and scholarship"--Emilio Bejel, Professor of Spanish American Literature, University of Colorado at Boulder and author of Gay Cuban Nation.

"Through a study of the playful narrative techniques of writers and film-makers such as Dash, Garcia Marquez, Rushdie and Kureishi, Frederick Luis Aldama offers a powerful critique of those who view magical realism as either a means toward postcolonial resistance or as a depiction of some exotic real world. Proposing a "postethnic" approach, Aldama argues convincingly that a reader's or viewer's understanding of the aesthetic dimensions of what he calls "magicorealism" can lead to greater political understanding than older, more ideologically oriented interpretations"--Herbert Lindenberger, Avalon Professor of Humanities, Emeritus, Stanford University.

"It is rare that we come across a truly great book, one in which fierce intelligence asserts itself in pages that truly matter. Such a book assigns us the task of reordering what we have taken as true on the promise of an understanding more profound. In such a book, we are guided by extraordinary vision, by an author with keen insight. In the rarest of occasions, we read words that are wise, words that make broad connection and interrogate a range of thought that afterwards we deem necessary. Postethnic Narrative Criticism is such a book; Frederick Aldama is such an author"--Alfred Arteaga, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies, University of California, Berkeley.

This work offers a highly valuable rethinking of magical realism, one that assesses previous work in new ways, one that extends the historical reach of arguments about magical realism, and one that brings a new level of sophistication to arguments about it"--Carl Guitierrez-Jones, Professor and Chair, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Enfin! Postethnic Narrative Criticism is the first book in ethnic and postcolonial literary and film studies that cuts through Gordian knots that arise from confusing narrative fiction (a complexly organized aesthetic that uses point of view, style, and genre to engage readers) with the facts that make up our reality outside of the text.
This is a must read for any reader interested in moving away from studies--poststructrualist or otherwise--that lead to dead ends.
It is a must read for readers tired of jargon and fundamental misconceptions of what novels and films can do in the world at large.

Magical realism has long been associated with Latin American literature and film. Aldama (University of Colorado, Boulder) examines its connections to other cultures as well. In five chapters, plus an introductory discussion of terminology and a coda, he emphasizes the need for precision in distinguishing between aesthetics and ontology while analyzing the films of Dash and Kureishi, the novels of Rushdie, and the Chicano/a narratives of Acosta and Castillo. Aldama posits the importance of storytelling techniques: parody, mimesis-as-play, rebellion, self-reflexivity, and the subaltern voice of the trickster/picaro. Citing such authors as Cervantes and Garcia Marquez as models, he stresses the need for imaginative writers and artists to question the effects of globalizatoin and consumptoin in the modern world. Joining a literature that includes Aldama's edited volume Arturo Islas: The Uncollected Works (2003) and related studes by such critics as Seymour Menton and Edward Said, this thought-provoking analysis should inspire further inquiry and discussion. Summing up: Recommended-all libaries serving upper-division undergraduates and above. Essential-researchers in the fields of comparative literature and film.
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries

I've just finished reading this nuanced and rich study of magical realism and finally understand not only how it differs from realism and the fantastic, but also how the make-believe of fiction has been confused with real facts that enable real politics. An excellent book for scholars and creative writers alike.