School Notes

As an author, what drew you to magic realism?

I love how it takes a certain magical world view that I associate with children’s lit and applies it to the adult world and so becomes a way to make a different kind of sense of our experiences.

When reading a work of magic realism, students often focus on “decoding the symbols.” Do you think this is a wise way for a student to approach your work? Why / why not?

Theme-hunting can be a problem in a class, and symbol decoding seems a little like theme-hunting– then the whole of the piece gets lost and it’s more of a puzzle. So I think it’s about approach– decoding symbols isn’t a big deal as long as it’s not the main focus, or a checklist, but more about taking the story as a whole and talking about what it’s doing/how it makes a reader feel/what the writer is doing on the page and the impact of this.

What is the difference (if any) between the genres of “magic realism” or “a fairy tale”?

I think scope– magic realism often has a wider scope and a fairy tale is very grounded in the world of a story, often a very short story, with very little character or setting development.