Defining Magical Realism
Magical realism is a literary genre in which fantastical elements appear in an otherwise realistic setting — and are accepted as normal by the characters who inhabit that world. The “magic” is not explained away or presented as metaphor. It simply exists, woven seamlessly into daily life.
Unlike fantasy, where entire worlds operate under different rules, magical realism keeps one foot firmly planted in our world. The grocery store, the courtroom, the schoolyard — all might be touched by the miraculous, and yet no one blinks. It’s not escapist, but instead deeply rooted in the social, political, and historical realities of the world, often used to critique or reimagine them.
Origins and Development
The term "magical realism" (or lo real maravilloso) has its roots in Latin America, where writers like Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel García Márquez pioneered the genre. In the 1940s–70s, especially during the Latin American literary boom, magical realism became a mode of storytelling that resisted colonial narratives, authoritarian regimes, and Eurocentric realism. It allowed the inclusion of indigenous worldviews, folklore, and collective memory.
Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) is considered the cornerstone of the genre. In it, a town is plagued by insomnia, characters ascend to heaven while folding laundry, and a child is born with a pig’s tail — all described with a journalist’s tone. Márquez once said:
“What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.”
Magical Realism in American Literature
While magical realism originated outside the U.S., American writers — particularly from marginalized communities — have embraced and reshaped the genre to reflect their own histories and cultural inheritances. In America, magical realism has become a tool for exploring the African American experience, Native American cosmologies, immigrant identities, and queer realities.
Toni Morrison – Beloved (1987)
Morrison’s Pulitzer-winning novel is a towering example of American magical realism. A ghost haunts the house of a formerly enslaved woman, not metaphorically, but literally — a manifestation of trauma, history, and memory. Morrison writes:
“She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.”
Morrison’s ghost is a reclamation of the supernatural — not as fantasy, but as lived historical reality. Her work made space for Black narratives to explore the spiritual, ancestral, and surreal aspects of survival.
Louise Erdrich – Love Medicine (1984) and The Plague of Doves (2008)
Erdrich’s novels often include dream visions, spirits, shape-shifting, and ancestral visitations — all set in the very real world of contemporary Ojibwe communities. In her work, the spiritual and the political are inseparable. As she writes in The Painted Drum:
“Things that are taken away from you do not remain gone — they only change shape.”
Jesmyn Ward – Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017)
Ward's novel mixes the southern Gothic with magical realism. The dead speak, and ghosts journey alongside the living in a Mississippi still scarred by racism and violence. The novel blends memory, myth, and mourning in a way that evokes Morrison and García Márquez both. In one scene, the ghost of a boy murdered in Parchman prison walks the earth, asking for release.
Ruth Ozeki – A Tale for the Time Being (2013)
Ozeki weaves Buddhist philosophy, time travel, and quantum theory into a deeply personal story about a diary washing ashore after the Fukushima tsunami. Her character, Ruth, a fictionalized version of the author, contemplates the permeability of time and identity. Ozeki writes:
“In the time it takes for a word to be spoken, time is already past.”
Themes in Magical Realism
- Memory and History: Often reimagines historical trauma through personal narrative and myth.
- Myth and Folklore: Draws on cultural traditions to destabilize dominant narratives.
- Resistance: Challenges realism as a colonial or oppressive narrative form.
- Embodiment: Explores how the body carries history, trauma, or transformation.
- Everyday Miracles: Treats the uncanny as ordinary — ghosts, prophetic dreams, or magical births are not questioned.
Magical Realism vs. Surrealism or Fantasy
It’s worth distinguishing magical realism from other genres. Surrealism tends to be dreamlike and abstract; fantasy creates alternate worlds. Magical realism, by contrast, is grounded in reality — the magic enters into the real world and is treated as if it belongs there.
The political stakes are different, too. Magical realism often emerges from cultures where rationalism was imposed as a form of domination. The genre becomes a form of cultural resistance, a way of keeping other modes of truth alive.
Magical Realism in Contemporary Indie Publishing
Today, magical realism continues to thrive outside the mainstream — in small presses, zines, speculative journals, and indie novellas. These works often feature queer, disabled, diasporic, and neurodivergent voices who use the genre to tell stories that don’t fit into dominant realist frameworks.
Reading Magical Realism: A Guide for New Readers
For those new to the genre, here are a few reading strategies:
- Don’t over-analyze the magic — accept it as part of the world.
- Focus on the emotional or symbolic resonance, not the logic.
- Let the story guide your sense of time and reality.
Why Magical Realism Still Matters
Magical realism continues to offer writers a way to tell complex, layered stories — ones that make room for the mystical, the ancestral, and the unexplainable. It challenges the idea that reality must be objective or secular. It offers ways of knowing that are emotional, cultural, and spiritual.
In an era where American literature is once again reckoning with its exclusions — of race, gender, indigeneity, queerness — magical realism becomes more than a style. It becomes a strategy. A way to say: my story doesn’t need your realism to be true.
Suggested Reading List
- One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel García Márquez
- Beloved – Toni Morrison
- Love Medicine – Louise Erdrich
- Sing, Unburied, Sing – Jesmyn Ward
- A Tale for the Time Being – Ruth Ozeki
- The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
- The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
Final Thoughts
Magical realism invites us to reimagine the world — not by escaping it, but by expanding it. It speaks to the wonder within the ordinary, and the truth within the unbelievable. For readers and writers alike, it’s a genre that refuses to separate life from the mysterious. And at Westbrae Literary Group, we believe that’s exactly where the most powerful stories live.
