True to form, Coates’s fiction debut engages directly with the histories of slavery and racism in the United States. This is how he learns about his ability to Conduct, which eventually connects him to the Underground Railroad. When his white half-brother drowns, Hiram lives because of his gift.
Conduction gives him the ability to transport himself (and potentially others) when water is present. Hiram Walker is an enslaved man in antebellum Virginia who has inherited the power of Conduction from his mother. However, if you’re familiar with his work on Black Panther, then The Water Dancer is likely a welcome addition to his fiction. If you’ve only heard of Coates’s nonfiction (such as Between the World and Me or We Were Eight Years in Power), you might initially be surprised that The Water Dancer is by the same author. And, of course, there’s what you might think of as “magical realism lite” (which I do not intend as a dig - in fact, I consider it a highly enjoyable subset of the genre), such as the mesmerizing works of Sarah Addison Allen. There are various subsets of magical realism - such as feminist magical realism - that use magic to disrupt dominant ideologies. Writers like Salman Rushdie, Gabriel García Márquez, and Isabel Allende have employed the genre toward anti-colonial aims. More than that, I argue that despite the harm that has been done through the problematic application of this term, it has a long and rich history of revolutionary work. If you can name it, you can think and talk about it more deeply. That means it’s legible and defines a particular category of literature (however imprecisely). So why continue to use this label? Well, for better or worse it’s a term that has gained traction in the publishing industry. By signing up you agree to our terms of use Thank you for signing up! Keep an eye on your inbox. The same is true of religious practices, cultural traditions, and other phenomena that the western intellectual tradition doesn’t acknowledge as “real.” Admittedly, magical realism has some problems. For example, ghosts are typical figures in magical realism novels at the same time, many cultures consider ghosts to be a natural reality. What’s especially troubling about this is the fact that this application tends to come from a Eurocentric position that labels “magical” any beliefs considered “irrational” or “unreal” from a very narrow perspective. The major issue with the term magical realism is that it has a history of being applied to works by minority writers, especially BIPOC writers the world wide. Similarly, Cherokee writer Brandon Hobson has discussed what he sees as the problematic use of the word magic, explaining that magic is “a little cheap way of talking about it.” They’re not alone. Toni Morrison was very public about the downsides of using magical realism to define her works (and those of other BIPOC writers). In his essay “ What We Talk About When We Talk About Magical Realism,” Fernando Sdrigotti underscores the damaging ways that magical realism has been used to essentialize, exoticize, and pigeonhole writers of color - most especially Latinx and Latin American writers. Others are very specific, considering only works where the tone is highly objective - even journalistic - but the characters or events break from reality.ĭespite the term “magical realism” having its roots in 1920s German art criticism, most literary uses of the term are traced to the Latin American “Boom” literature of the 1960s.
Some scholars include anything that is not typically the domain of the “real,” the broadness of which can see the label “magical realism” applied to folklore, mythology, fairytales, fantasy, speculative fiction, paranormal literature, and more. Regardless of how much magic there is, what counts as “magic” is widely disputed and largely disagreed upon. Sometimes the magic permeates the text, jumping out at you from every page, while in other instances the magic is occasional. Beyond that, well, there’s a lot of confusion. Generally speaking, magical realism novels are characterized by its overall adherence to realism…except for the magic. So broad, in fact, that it can absorb other genres (like fantasy). What defines a magical realism novel? The presence of magic, obviously! But that’s an extremely broad definition.
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