Cultural Realism: Reconsidering Magical Realism in the Works of Contemporary American Women Writers

This title is printed to order. This book may have been self-published. If so, we cannot guarantee the quality of the content. In the main most books will have gone through the editing process however some may not. We therefore suggest that you be aware of this before ordering this book. If in doubt check either the author or publisher’s details as we are unable to accept any returns unless they are faulty. Please contact us if you have any questions.

This book is committed to women as writers and storytellers; all the selected novels are female-centric in that the main characters are women. The authors, also women, are from three diverse American ethnic groups from both the North and South. Through a close reading of several novels, Babakhani shows how the reinvention of cultural traditions serves these women writers as a political, decolonial, and feminist tool. Babakhani situates her readings in a critique of the concepts of realism and magical realism. Because magical realism sets realism against magic and implies binary oppositions, Babakhani proposes cultural realism as a revisionary concept that takes the cultural importance of rituals and beliefs seriously, without simply dismissing them as superstition.