Moments of magical realism in U.S. ethnic literatures

About this book

This is the first anthology of its kind in two ways: first, it points to a subtle shift away from privileging magical realism as a monolithic category in the literatures of the Americas and second, it focuses this critical approach highlighting the work of writers from all the major minority groups of color - US Latino/a, African American, Native American, and Asian American, Jewish American, or Iranian American ancestry - who deploy magical realist moments to refer to traumatic or suppressed histories. Groundbreaking essays by both established experts and rising scholars offer a myriad of methodologies, including literary, psychoanalytic, and trauma theories; historiography, myth, and mnemonic analyses; religious, anthropological, and Marxist approaches. Magical realist moments conceal and reveal traumatic pasts, suppressed histories, half-known memories, lies, truths, new affinities, and even signposts to the future.