Bearing the Burden to Neverland: Exorcising Demons of Otherness with Healing Incantations of Magical Realism in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony, Gloria Naylor’s Bailey’s Café and Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate. | ||
| CDELT Occasional Papers in the Development of English Education | ||
| Article 20, Volume 66, Issue 1, January 2019, Pages 503-551 PDF (1.02 M) | ||
| Document Type: Original Article | ||
| DOI: 10.21608/opde.2019.133254 | ||
| Author | ||
| Rasha Mohamed Wagdy M. Elleithy Elleithy | ||
| Abstract | ||
| In three works that span a panorama of American heritage and culture, three ethnic women writers carry their burden of subjugation, repression and pain to Neverland through storytelling as well. This Neverland is a distant imaginative magical land in which stories of abuse and accounts of oppression turn into narratives of power and healing in which our women writers Leslie Marmon Silko, Gloria Naylor and Laura Esquivel do not narrate their texts, but rather serve them to the reader as a delicious meal. They do this through a mixture of food recipes, magical banquets and metaphysical ceremonies. With their Magical Realist narratives, the three writers present their readers with three delicious banquets of harsh reality with a sprinkle of magic. Their meals are beautifully served as only a crafty enchantress could do to entertain her dinner guests. With their well-measured touch of magic, the reader is taken in a fantastic experience. In their narratives, the effect of vibrant magic within their realist narratives vary: sometimes they use it to ease the pain of horrific experiences, other times they spark hope in an otherwise hopeless condition, or they simply manage to engage the reader in a process of Aristotelian catharsis that arises pleasure, entertainment and pain. And similar to Shahrazad’s feminine defensive technique, they attempt to fight otherness they had personally and professionally fell victim of through what women have always resorted to: imagination and storytelling. In the three novels, storytelling is combined with magic in a feminist approach employing the technique of Magical Realism. This paper is divided into two parts. The first part is devoted to a quick exploration of Feminism—with special emphasis on ethnic Feminism--and Magical Realism and their historical implications. This will be explored within the American milieu in which ethnicity is of a special nature. The second part will be devoted to the study of the selected works of the three writers in order to apply the basic elements of Ethnic Magical Feminism on these works concluding with the common experience, pain and hope expressed in these works. | ||
| Keywords | ||
| Magical Realism; Feminism; Otherness; Ethnicity; Magical Feminism | ||
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