It all depends on what you mean by reality : US plain magical realism

The aim of this article is to contextualize some recent literary works from the United States which present a hybridized, oxymoronic configuration, whose characteristics are very close to those of the canon of magical realist texts. In order to conduct this analysis, it will be necessary to retrace the history of the concept, to understand its aims and limits and isolate the different types that follow from such an evolution. It will be important to posit a poetics of the mode and provide a survey of critical literature in order to define a functional typology, casting some light on a concept frequently accused of being obscure. Magical realism is not new, in fact, to a certain critical confusion, which is largely due to its heterogeneous development and too often remains unexamined when addressing the mode. Hence all the complaints, from the infamous consideration by Rodriguez Monegal, lamenting, on the occasion of the first international convention on the matter, a “dialogo de sordos” (dialogue of the deaf) to the assumption that “[d]efinitions and theories, be they traditional or recent, are confusingly contradictory” (Bortolussi 280). Once the methodological framework has been clarified, we will concentrate on what we believe to be a peculiar North American branch of magical realism, introducing authors associated with the concept and focusing in particular on the work of Aimee Bender