Magical realism in novels of the black world

As a term, magical realism has a significant history. From its original context of painting, magical realism was applied to literature where it now represents a special mode of writing that mixes realism and the fantastic. It is a mode of writing both incongruent and popular with the current spirit of world wide late capitalism. As a concept, magical realism has been given narrow definitions by many a critic. In this study I expand its limits, namely by including in the category of the fantastic many other aspects of the supernatural. I also shift the study of magical realism from Latin America, its traditional geographical area of definition, to a cultural sphere called "the black world" which includes Africa, North America and the Caribbean, with writers such as Bessie Head and Ben Okri, Toni Morrison and Charles Johnson, Jacques-Stephen Alexis and Simone Schwarz-Bart. My study thus "decenters" magical realism, and also shows that the black authors selected use that aesthetic in a way that lends itself to a postcolonial reading, like the canonical Latin American magical realists. The postcolonial reading of magical realism in the black literary context shows some authors' desire not only to discover and preserve their African cultural heritage, but also to retake possession of their history in order to look at the future with serenity. This analysis of magical realism also serves as a means of examining power struggles and power abuse as well as their corollary of human sufferings not only at the level of society in general, but also within interpersonal relationships.