It is altogether fitting that Cristina Garcia should plunge us into a world defined by the always shifting definitions of the world of magical realism, for GarciaÆs books are essentially Cuban, and the concept of magical realism itself was born in Cuba. Although this style of writing is perhaps best known through the work of Argentine writers like Jorge Luis Borges, the term itself and the literary style that this sometimes elusive phrase refers to were the children of Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier. Carpentier was seeking for a literary style (and concept) broad enough to accommodate both the events of everyday life as he saw it unfolding before him in the years after World War II in Cuba and the fabulous nature of Latin American geography and history (Zamora and Faris, 1995, p. 36).
CarpentierÆs ideas about the kind of writing that could span such a large portion of humanityÆs experience was based in large measure on the surrealism of French visual and literary art forms, but Carpentier extended these. He wanted a form of writing that had the capacity to enrich the readerÆs (and writerÆs) capacity of what is ôrealö by incorporating all dimensions of the imagination, particularly as expressed in magic, myth and religion. Beyond the strictly formal opportunities offered by magical realism to Carpentier and the writers of his generation, magical realism offered a distinctly indigenous voice û a way of writing and speaking that was entirely Latin American, that belonged to no one but themselves (Zamora and Faris, 1995, p. 41). This sense of speaking with a local voice is very much evident in GarciaÆs work as well.
GarciaÆs writing is marked by the pillars of magical realism. While unmistakably local in the realities that it portrays, it is also universal in her appeal to the great metaphysical questions that all humans û regardless of their culture or their time and moment in history come up against. Garcia asks us to c...