Patricia Hart first used the term “magical feminism” thirty years ago to describe the work of Isabel Allende, the Chilean-American author who was compared to Gabriel Garcia Marquez until critics turned cobalt blue. The supernatural elements in magical realism can serve to disrupt reality, giving voice to the other. And sometimes, that reimagining includes leaps of enchantment. Which makes sense: If we don’t like reality as it is, with all its violence and injustice, we have to reimagine it. Its history and traditions are firmly rooted in the literature of resistance, in the literature of re-visioning. But it should never be dismissed as some kitschy literary device. Writing magical realism can be risky it’s easy to fall into clichés.
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