English Language and Literature Commons^™

Breaking The Bonds Of Silence: The Immigrant Experience In Magical Realist Novels Of Katherine Vaz And Chitra Divakaruni., Hillary Dawn Hester

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The genre of Magical Realism is normally explored on the sole basis of its identification with and fantastic expression of Latin-American cultural identity. However, the genre, when employed by non-American immigrant women, takes on new characteristics. It not only highlights the mystical underpinnings of everyday life but instructs in a subliminally didactic manner by opening the reader to new possibilities through delightful imagery and a plot woven around transposed myth and folklore.

In examining how two female Magical Realists translate their narratives of immigrant life in twentieth-century United States, the instructive nature of the genre is laid bare. Both use …