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Homework:

• read Personal Belongings for Wed, Mar 11 @ 11PM - responses due

• Essay, why is Diana Raznovich laughing? by Mon, Mar 9

Three degrees of Affinity to Experiencing Oppression

• Absolute identity- where two people experience the same oppression. Problems like intimate partner violence and police harrassment are common to many people, even if they feel personal

• Analogy -

Magical Realism

Latinx Theatre Practitioners

What is Magic Realism?

• Real world setting + fantastical elements

• It has the feel of magic - anything is possible

• It is not about the impossible but the implausible

History

• 1925 - coined by German art critic Franz Roch to describe New Objectivity style in painting

• the term (real maravilloso) crosses the ocean to South America where Latin American authors start to absorb and adapt the idea into their storytelling. Ex) Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Isabel Allende

• Latin American authors use magical realism to fit their own cultures and within their frame of reference. In essence, a talk-back to Eurocentrism’s logic and reason (colonialist critique). It was meant to assert and amplify their cultural heritage in relation to artistic vision.

Elements of Literary Magical Realism

• familial history and relationships

• life, death, and the afterlife

• multiple realities

• symbolic names and characterizations

• plots are not linear but circular

• time and space-time shifts between co-existing plits

• myths, legends, and oral traditions of storytelling

“The narrator does not provide explanations about the credibility of events described in the text. Further, the narrator is indifferent; the story proceeds with ‘logical precision’ as if nothing extraordinary took place.” - Jay Archer David, author