Indispensable Lives : Magical realism and postcolonial resistance in Ana Castillo's So far from God, and Junot Diaz's The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao

"In this paper, I will discuss magical realism as a postcolonial genre of resistance in Ana Castillo's So Far from God, and Junot Díaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and whether or not labeling these novels as magical realism is a problematic form of exoticizing and other-ing. I compare these two novels—one written by a Chicana (Mexican-American) woman in 1993, the other written by a Dominican-American man in 2007—to look at the similarities in the way they challenge US/European cultural and political dominance. I also believe that comparing my analysis, along with criticism about the presence of magical realism in these two very different novels, raises important questions about the nature of the definition of this genre."--Page 4.Includes bibliographical references (page 39-40)