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What is Magical Realism in Literature? An Exploration of El Realismo Mágico
Introduction to Magical Realism (Excerpt)
How to Write Magical Realism (Excerpt)
How to Write Magical Realism: 4 Tips for Writing Great Magical Realism (Excerpt)
Magical Realism: What is it? (Excerpt)
Examples of Magical Realism Stories
From https://writers.com/what-is-magical-realism-in-literature
What is Magical Realism in Literature? An Exploration of El Realismo Mágico
January 27, 2021 by Sean Glatch Leave a Comment
What is magical realism? Imagine you’re putting dinner in the oven, but when you open the door, you find it frosted over and occupied by tiny skiers. Alternately, imagine a woman discovers she can cry fabric (instead of water), so she starts a sewing business where she knots her tears into dresses.
This odd blending of the magical and the mundane constitutes the elements of magical realism, a wonderful genre for writers of all paths. Magical realism authors populate many of today’s fiction journals, and magical realism books have recently won Pulitzer, Nobel, and Booker Prizes.
Yet, because the genre is growing in popularity, many writers have a sense of what magical realism means but apply it incorrectly. (For example, the Harry Potter series would not be considered a set of magical realism books. I’ll explain why later!)
But if those books don’t count, then what is magical realism? Let’s unpack this genre step-by-step, starting with the basic components of magical realism stories and ending with tips for writing the genre yourself.
Magical realism definition: what it is and what it isn’t
In magical realism, fantasy slips into everyday life; however, the focus isn’t on the fantastical elements of the story, but on what those elements mean for the characters.
In short, “magical realism” describes a work of fiction where fantasy slips into everyday life. However, the focus isn’t on the fantastical elements of the story, so much as on what those elements mean for the characters. Fantasy often acts as an extended metaphor, externalizing some sort of internal conflict or moral quandary in the protagonist’s life.
Some great magical realism examples show up in Carmen Maria Machados’ collection Her Body and Other Parties. Stories include: a detective connects a string of assaults in NYC to a wave of spiritual turbulence; two women have a baby without a father; and, a man wonders about the ribbon connecting his wife’s head to her body. In all of these examples, the plot starts with a dash of fantasy, but the story isn’t concerned with the logic of magic, just its aftermath.
Other magical realism authors include Isabel Allende, Gabriel Marcia Marquez, Toni Morrison, and Aimee Bender. While their plots and writing styles differ, these pioneers of the genre included the following elements in their magical realism stories:
- Brief exposition based on the occurrence of something magical or supernatural
- A focus on the real world implications of that brief magical phenomenon; in other words, a “literary fiction” style of writing
- The use of fantasy as an extended metaphor, often representing something internal to the protagonist
Magical realism is literary fiction with just a dash of fantasy.
In other words, magical realism is literary fiction with just a dash of fantasy. This is why works of fiction like Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series, Neil Gaiman’s American Gods, or Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus wouldn’t be considered magical realism: though these novels often occupy real world settings, their plots require fantastical creatures and places to keep the story going. This is also why Harry Potter doesn’t count: though the castles and Department of Magic are both vaguely “muggle-esque,” the books require too much world building for the series to be anything other than fantasy.
A brief history of the genre
Charting the history of any genre is tricky. While historians can track when a term was first used, deciding when a genre began is a wholly different matter. For example, some writers argue that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is the first science fiction novel. If that were the case, then Voltaire’s Micromegas would just be a fever dream, not an advanced work about interplanetary travel.
Magical realism shares much the same conundrum. The genre certainly began in Latin America: much of the folklore and storytelling in South and Central America relies on the elements that today’s magical realism stories use.
Much of the folklore and storytelling in South and Central America relies on elements that today’s magical realism stories use.
It makes sense, then, for the genre’s pioneers to hail from Latin America, and many historians credit Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende for popularizing magical realism. Allende’s stories blend elements of Chilean folklore with modern twists, while Marquez’s stories dwell on utopia and the freedom of love. Importantly, many magical realism authors used the genre with subtle political intent, criticizing or subverting the political unrest that many South American nations endured in the 20th century.
Although el realismo magico is a distinctly Latin American invention, works of fiction that far predate the genre still uphold its basic requirements. For instance, many Greek and Roman myths could be considered magical realism examples. The story of Icarus uses magical wings as a metaphor for hubris—the same metaphor which later inspired Micromegas. Likewise, the tragedy of Medusa also relies on just a sprinkle of fantasy: once Athena turns Medusa into a snake-haired monster, there is no further need for magical intervention, we must merely observe Medusa’s estrangement from society and eventual slaughter at the hands of Perseus.
All of this to say: modern writers can find inspiration throughout history. The use of fantasy to tell stories is as old as storytelling itself—perhaps fantasy is even innate to the human experience.
How to write a magical realism short story
Where does one begin writing magical realism stories? First, you want to be sure that your story adheres to the elements of magical realism. Those three elements, as we’ve discussed, are 1) Magical exposition, 2) Storytelling through the conventions of literary fiction, and 3) The use of fantasy as an extended metaphor.
Let’s use a short story for comparison. Carmen Maria Machado’s “Especially Heinous” is a longer read, but I’ll summarize how the story works as magical realism without any spoilers, as I highly encourage you to read it if you’re interested in magical realism.
Especially Heinous does the following:
- Exposition: Especially Heinous pushes boundaries by having two fantasy plots interweave through the story. One element involves the dark drum of Manhattan’s spirits; the other involves unexplained doppelgangers whose job performance exceeds the protagonists’ performance.
- Storytelling: Despite these impossible plot lines, the story largely explores how Stabler and Benson investigate their surreal experiences, with many “episodes” devoted entirely to a character’s internal life. Contemporary fiction often seeks to expand the boundaries of form, and this story’s narrative construction certainly expands those boundaries, using episode summaries to tell a gripping tale.
- Extended metaphor: In brief, the irate spirits of Manhattan’s voiceless women represent a kind of rejection of sexism and rape culture. Many of the girls with bells for eyes were underage victims of murder and male violence, and though the story was written before the #MeToo movement, it captures much of the western feminist zeitgeist. As for the doppelgangers, perhaps they represent an idealized version of the protagonists—versions of themselves without the weight of past trauma.
Take this reading like a writer approach yourself and try to map how the story adheres to these three qualities.
Finding inspiration for magical realism stories
Where can you turn to find inspiration for your next magical realism stories? Because this genre is both exciting and contemporary, the digital literary world has come to love it. For example, this magical realism bot on twitter posts the kind of zany, out-of-the-box plots that the genre is known for. Starting with the plots on this twitter account could jumpstart something new and magical in your own writing life.
Of course, the inspiration for a book can come from other novels, too. Any of the titles on this list of 100 magical realism books should satisfy your curiosity—while fueling the urge to write fiction.
However, the best stories are inspired by everyday life. Speaking on Especially Heinous, Carmen Maria Machado admits that the inspiration came from a days-long binge of Law & Order while suffering through a fever. If an author can find magic in NBC reruns, where else might there be magic?
Try combining two things: a facet of mundane life and a certain interest or hyperfixation.
Try it yourself. To start your next magical realism story or book, try combining two things: a facet of mundane life and a certain interest or hyperfixation. The two should meld together with ease, like how, in “Samsa in Love,” Haruki Murakami blends everyday romance with a keen fixation on Kafka’s The Metamorphosis.
Then, flesh out the idea by outlining the story’s exposition, storytelling, and extended metaphor. With any luck, this outlining will catapult you directly into the story’s first line!
Finally, as you write your story, you’ll encounter many opportunities to expand the meaning of your extended metaphor and push the limits of fantasy. Lean into these moments; allow your story its zaniness.
From https://www.thoughtco.com/magical-realism-definition-and-examples-4153362
Strangeness Infused Into Stories
There’s nothing new about infusing strangeness into stories about otherwise ordinary people. Scholars have identified elements of magical realism in Emily Brontë’s passionate, haunted Heathcliff (“Wuthering Heights“) and Franz Kafka’s unfortunate Gregor, who turns into a giant insect (“The Metamorphosis“). However, the expression “magical realism” grew out of specific artistic and literary movements that emerged during the mid-20th century.
Art From a Variety of Traditions
In 1925, critic Franz Roh (1890–1965) coined the term Magischer Realismus (Magic Realism) to describe the work of German artists who depicted routine subjects with eerie detachment. By the 1940s and 1950s, critics and scholars were applying the label to art from a variety of traditions. The enormous floral paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986), the psychological self-portraits of Frida Kahlo (1907–1954), and the brooding urban scenes by Edward Hopper (1882–1967) all fall within the realm of magic realism.
A Separate Movement in Literature
In literature, magical realism evolved as a separate movement, apart from the quietly mysterious magic realism of visual artists. Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier (1904–1980) introduced the concept of “lo real maravilloso” (“the marvelous real”) when he published his 1949 essay “On the Marvelous Real in Spanish America.” Carpentier believed that Latin America, with its dramatic history and geography, took on an aura of the fantastic in the eyes of the world. In 1955, literary critic Angel Flores (1900–1992) adopted the term magical realism (as opposed to magic realism) to describe the writings of Latin American authors who transformed “the common and the every day into the awesome and the unreal.”
Latin American Magic Realism
According to Flores, magical realism began with a 1935 story by Argentine writer Jorge Luís Borges (1899–1986). Other critics have credited different writers for launching the movement. However, Borges certainly helped lay the groundwork for Latin American magical realism, which was seen as unique and distinct from the work of European writers like Kafka. Other Hispanic authors from this tradition include Isabel Allende, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Laura Esquivel, Elena Garro, Rómulo Gallegos, Gabriel García Márquez, and Juan Rulfo.
Extraordinary Circumstances Were Expected
“Surrealism runs through the streets,” Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) said in an interview with “The Atlantic.” García Márquez shunned the term “magical realism” because he believed that extraordinary circumstances were an expected part of South American life in his native Columbia. To sample his magical-but-real writing, begin with “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” and “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World.”
An International Trend
Today, magical realism is viewed as an international trend, finding expression in many countries and cultures. Book reviewers, booksellers, literary agents, publicists, and authors themselves have embraced the label as a way to describe works that infuse realistic scenes with fantasy and legend. Elements of magical realism can be found in writings by Kate Atkinson, Italo Calvino, Angela Carter, Neil Gaiman, Günter Grass, Mark Helprin, Alice Hoffman, Abe Kobo, Haruki Murakami, Toni Morrison, Salman Rushdie, Derek Walcott, and countless other authors around the world.
6 Key Characteristics of Magical Realism
It’s easy to confuse magical realism with similar forms of imaginative writing. However, fairy tales are not magical realism. Neither are horror stories, ghost stories, science fiction, dystopian fiction, paranormal fiction, absurdist literature, and sword and sorcery fantasy. To fall within the tradition of magical realism, the writing must have most, if not all, of these six characteristics:
1. Situations and Events That Defy Logic: In Laura Esquivel’s lighthearted novel “Like Water for Chocolate,” a woman forbidden to marry pours magic into food. In “Beloved,” American author Toni Morrison spins a darker tale: An escaped enslaved woman moves into a house haunted by the ghost of an infant who died long ago. These stories are very different, yet both are set in a world where truly anything can happen.
2. Myths and Legends: Much of the strangeness in magic realism derives from folklore, religious parables, allegories, and superstitions. An abiku—a West African spirit child—narrates “The Famished Road” by Ben Okri. Often, legends from divergent places and times are juxtaposed to create startling anachronisms and dense, complex stories. In “A Man Was Going Down The Road,” Georgian author Otar Chiladze merges an ancient Greek myth with the devastating events and tumultuous history of his Eurasian homeland near the Black Sea.
3. Historic Context and Societal Concerns: Real-world political events and social movements entwine with fantasy to explore issues such as racism, sexism, intolerance, and other human failings. “Midnight’s Children” by Salman Rushdieis the saga of a man born at the moment of India’s independence. Rushdie’s character is telepathically linked with a thousand magical children born at the same hour and his life mirrors key events of his country.
4. Distorted Time and Sequence: In magical realism, characters may move backward, leap forward, or zigzag between the past and the future. Notice how Gabriel García Márquez treats time in his 1967 novel, “Cien Años de Soledad” (“One Hundred Years of Solitude”). Sudden shifts in narrative and the omnipresence of ghosts and premonitions leave the reader with the sense that events cycle through an endless loop.
5. Real-World Settings: Magic realism is not about space explorers or wizards; “Star Wars” and “Harry Potter” are not examples of the approach. Writing for “The Telegraph,” Salman Rushdie noted that “the magic in magic realism has deep roots in the real.” Despite the extraordinary events in their lives, the characters are ordinary people who live in recognizable places.
6. Matter-of-Fact Tone: The most characteristic feature of magical realism is the dispassionate narrative voice. Bizarre events are described in an offhand manner. Characters do not question the surreal situations they find themselves in. For example, in the short book “Our Lives Became Unmanageable,” a narrator plays down the drama of her husband’s vanishing: “…the Gifford who stood before me, palms outstretched, was no more than a ripple in the atmosphere, a mirage in a gray suit and striped silk tie, and when I reached again, the suit evaporated, leaving only the purple sheen of his lungs and the pink, pulsing thing I’d mistaken for a rose. It was, of course, only his heart.”
Don’t Put It in a Box
Literature, like visual art, doesn’t always fit into a tidy box. When Nobel Laureate Kazuo Ishiguro published “The Buried Giant,” book reviewers scrambled to identify the genre. The story appears to be a fantasy because it unfolds in a world of dragons and ogres. However, the narration is dispassionate and the fairy tale elements are understated: “But such monsters were not cause for astonishment…there was so much else to worry about.”
Is “The Buried Giant” pure fantasy, or has Ishiguro entered the realm of magical realism? Perhaps books like this belong in genres all their own.
From https://penandthepad.com/write-magical-realism-2159950.html
Experiment with Time
Time is not always linear in magical realism. There can be great shifts in the narrative timeline. A single moment can be made to feel like 100 years, or vice versa. The story can jump around without the use of flashbacks or flash forwards. Characters do not necessarily time travel — though that can be an element of magical realism — but their stories do not have to be told on a single timeline.
4 Elements of a Good Magical Realism Story
What does it take to suspend a reader’s disbelief, and immerse them in a world just a little bit stranger than their own? Here are a few key characteristics of magical realism:
- Realistic setting: All magical realism novels take place in a real-world setting that’s familiar to the reader.
- Magical elements: From talking objects to undead characters to telepathy, every magical realism story has fantastical elements that do not occur in our world. However, they’re presented as normal within the novel.
- Limited information: Magical realism authors deliberately leave the magic in their stories unexplained in order to normalize it as much as possible and reinforce that it is part of everyday life.
- Critique: Authors often use magical realism to offer an implicit critique of society, most notably politics and the elite. The genre grew in popularity in parts of the world like Latin America that were economically oppressed and exploited by Western countries. Magic realist writers used the genre to express their distaste and critique American imperialism.
From https://www.emwelsh.com/blog/magical-realism/
How is it different from…?
Now that we understand what traits make up the genre, it is time to compare those traits to other genres storytellers often confuse them with.
Fantasy
As mentioned before, magical realism takes elements of fantasy and makes them rooted in our sense of reality, whereas fantasy creates an entirely new reality. I have yet to see dragons or elves in a magical realism piece, but it is worth noting that both genres are rooted in fables and myths, so their narration styles can often be very similar.
Science Fiction
While both science fiction and magical realism are rooted in reality, science fiction usually presents itself as a version of our world in the future or some alternate universe completely, but it is never rooted in our current reality, always an altered one. Aspects of the world are explained and occasionally backed by scientific fact – or at least some made-up version of fact. Most post-apocalyptic stories fall into this category as well, though even if they do not they are usually not magical realism stories.
Surrealism
The difference between magical realism and surrealism is quite tricky, especially because they both all exist as forms of art. When watching Dalí and Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou, it is easy to mistake the style for being magical realist. However, the biggest difference between the two genres is that surrealism is concerned with dreams and imagination, whereas magical realism focuses on playing with the physical realities of the world. Having seen many experimental surrealist films in college, I can say that if you were to watch a surrealist film and then watch a magical realist film, you would easily be able to tell the difference between the two.
Examples of Magical Realism
Still not sure you’ve grasped the genre? Try looking at some examples for your preferred mode of storytelling!
Films:
- Midnight in Paris
- Birdman
- The Purple Rose of Cairo
- Pan’s Labyrinth
- Big Fish
Plays:
- One Flea Spare by Naomi Wallace
- Angels in America by Tony Kushner
- Marisol by José Rivera
- The Clean House by Sarah Ruhl
Books:
- One Hundred Years of Solitude, Love in the Time of Cholera, anything by García Márquez
- Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
- The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
- The Wizard of the Crow by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
- Beloved by Toni Morrison
- Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie
Video Games:
- Memoranda
- Papa & Yo
From https://wilpula.org/creative-writing-using-magical-realism/
For writers, a useful image of Magical Realism is that of a recipe. Let’s take a look at the ingredients in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s short story “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World.”
Marquez’s story works according to one very simple idea. Local children find a dead body that has washed up on the beach. The corpse gets bigger and bigger as more and more people see and handle it. It increases in size, weight, and beauty, until it changes the lives of the villagers and of everyone who comes into contact with it.
Let’s use Marquez’ story to help us write.
- With a partner or on your own, list 10 things that you would normally find at the beach. Example: beach ball.
- Pick one of these things, or have a friend pick one for you.
- Now think about 5-7 places that are as far away from the beach as possible, both geographically and psychologically. Examples: A McDonald’s, Sheetz, or a doctor’s examination room.
- Let’s write. Follow these instructions exactly.
- Now write 2-3 sentences about finding that beach-thing in that non-beach place.
- In the next couple of sentences make that thing get larger or change it in some physical way.
- Change the reactions of the people who have found it. 2-3 sentences.
- Change the thing again. 2-3 sentences.
- Bring in more people and make them have bigger/different reactions. 2-3 sentences.
- Change the thing one more time. 2-3 sentences.
- Bring in someone from very far away who sees/experiences the thing from their own point of view. What do they say? 2-3 sentences.
Congratulations! You just wrote the beginning of a magical realist story.
Don’t like what you wrote? Try another combination. Or flip the exercise.
Make a list of things you usually find in an office and put one of them on a mountaintop or in a forest. Now what happens?
Things to think about:
If you look back at your story and compare it with Marquez’s you will see that both stories work by:
- Establishing the juxtaposition between the usual and the strange/impossible.
- Continually growing the situation, making it literally and figuratively bigger and bigger, and then shifting the point of view at the very end.
Dramatic physical change to a main character is a fantastic way to make a story feel emotionally intense and exciting. It’s also a great way to introduce humor into the picture.
KC Storytellers 