Beyond Magical Realism

This class will present recent Latin American fiction that goes beyond magical realism by crossing into genre literature. We will first study the history and beginnings of magical realism and how it became a literary label. To understand key aspects of it, we will discuss short stories written by its most renowned author, Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez. We will then compare García Márquez’s work to that of Mariana Enríquez and Samantha Schweblin, two contemporary authors who resort to the horror genre and are part of a gothic trend in Latin American writing. The goal will not be to discard magical realism, but to understand how a variety of styles and genres can represent Latin American reality. The class will close with a brief survey of Latin American authors currently engaged in genre fiction.

Instructor: Manuel Chinchilla holds a Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literatures from The University of Michigan and was Associate Professor of Spanish and Italian at Sewanee: The University of the South, where he taught Latin American literature and culture, Italian language, and collaborative seminars in the Humanities Program. He has published academic work on contemporary literature and culture from Mexico, Central America, and Italy. He currently teaches Spanish language and culture at University School, in Hunting Valley, Ohio. His research has shifted to translation studies. He has finished a draft for an English translation of Honduran author Jorge Medina García’s Cenizas en la memoria (Ashen Memories), and is currently translating a selection of works by poet Juana Pavón.