TY - BOOK AU - Villarreal,Vanessa Angélica TI - Magical/realism: essays on music, memory, fantasy, and borders SN - 9780593187142 PY - 2024///] CY - New York PB - Tiny Reparations Books KW - Villarreal, Vanessa Angélica. KW - Mexican American women authors KW - Biography KW - Children of immigrants KW - United States KW - Social conditions KW - Popular culture KW - American essays KW - Mexican American authors KW - Imperialism KW - Immigrants KW - Essays KW - lcgft N1 - Includes bibliographical references; The migrant's journey -- About a girl -- All the Atreyus at the Sphinx Gate -- Encyclopedia of all the daughters I couldn't be -- Buen niña -- Americana -- After the World-Breaking, World Building -- Inteligente -- La Canción de la nena -- Bonita -- Curanderismo -- Mexicana -- En Útero -- Virgen -- Memory, a lacuna -- Doctora -- Alternative School: A Very Special Episode -- My boyfriend's maid: a reverse Cinderella sory -- Bien educada -- Good immigrant -- Volver, volver -- Magical Realism, or the objective correlative as the symbol of madness: a domestic realism vignette -- The fantasy of healing -- In the shadow of the wolf -- The final boss: a poetics of world-building in the apocalyptic imagination -- Magical realism, or the wolf is the land is the people is the border: an animal study -- When we all loved a show about a wall: ICE, borders, and the accidental revoutionary politcs of Game of Thrones -- Afterword N2 - "In Magical/Realism, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal offers us an intimate mosaic of migration, violence, and colonial erasure through the lens of her marriage and her experiences navigating American monoculture. As she attempts to recover the truth from the absences and silences within her life, her relationships, and those of her ancestors, Vanessa pieces together her story from the fragments of music, memory, and fantasy that have helped her make sense of it all. Each chapter is an attempt to reimagine and re-world what has been lost. In one essay, Vanessa examines the gender performativity of Nirvana and Selena; in another, she offers a radical but crucial racial reading of Jon Snow in Game of Thrones; and throughout the collection, she explores how fantasy can provide healing when grief feels insurmountable. She reflects on the moments of her life that are too painful to remember--her difficult adolescence, her role as the eldest daughter of Mexican immigrants, her divorce--and finds a new way to archive her history and map her future(s), one infused with the hope and joy of fantasy and magical thinking. By engaging readers in her project of rebuilding narrative, Vanessa broadens our understanding of what memoir and cultural criticism can be. Magical/Realism is a wise, tender, and essential collection that carves a path toward a new way of remembering and telling our stories." -- ER -