Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: Tracing magical irruptions in US ethnic literatures / Lyn Di Iorio Sandin and Richard Perez -- Trauma, magic, and genealogy: moments of magical realism in Daughters of the stone by Dhalma Llanos-Figueroa and The autobiography of my mother by Jamaica Kincaid / Lyn Di loro Sandin -- Jewish post-Holocaust fiction and the magical realist turn / Caroline Rody -- Flying to save her life: bad luck, bad choices, and bad mothers in Gina B. Nahai's Moonlight on the avenue of faith / Ibis Gomez-Vega -- Flashes of transgression: the Fuku, negative aesthetics, and the future in The brief wondrous life of Oscar Wao by Junior Diaz / Richard Perez -- Searching for rhythm and freedom: African American magical realism and the creation of a home country / Angela J. Francis -- Of magical gourds and secret senses: the uses of magical realism in Asian American literature / Begona Simal-Gonzalez -- "We, the Shamans, eat tobacco and sing": figures of Shamanic power in US and Latin America magical realism / Wendy Faris -- Mythic realism, dreams, and prophecy in James Welch's The heartsong of charging elk / Lori Burlingame -- Blood re(a)d: Native American literature and the emergence of the mythic real / Allison E. Brown -- Lifting "the weight of the continent": magical realism on the Northern American landscape / Shannin Schroeder -- Mama day: where Gothicism and magical realism meet / Donald J. Reilly -- Latinos and magic realism: promised land or convoluted history / Roman de la Campa.

"This is the first anthology of its kind in two ways: first, it points to a subtle shift away from privileging magical realism as a monolithic category in the literatures of the Americas and second, it focuses this critical approach highlighting the work of writers from all the major minority groups of color - US Latino/a, African American, Native American, and Asian American, Jewish American, or Iranian American ancestry - who deploy magical realist moments to refer to traumatic or suppressed histories. Groundbreaking essays by both established experts and rising scholars offer a myriad of methodologies, including literary, psychoanalytic, and trauma theories; historiography, myth, and mnemonic analyses; religious, anthropological, and Marxist approaches. Magical realist moments conceal and reveal traumatic pasts, suppressed histories, half-known memories, lies, truths, new affinities, and even signposts to the future."--Publisher's website.

Electronic reproduction