Degree Name

MA (Master of Arts)

Program

English

Date of Award

12-2003

Committee Chair or Co-Chairs

Jeffrey Powers-Beck

Committee Members

Ardis L. Nelson, Kevin E. O'Donnell

Abstract

The genre of Magical Realism is normally explored on the sole basis of its identification with and fantastic expression of Latin-American cultural identity. However, the genre, when employed by non-American immigrant women, takes on new characteristics. It not only highlights the mystical underpinnings of everyday life but instructs in a subliminally didactic manner by opening the reader to new possibilities through delightful imagery and a plot woven around transposed myth and folklore.

In examining how two female Magical Realists translate their narratives of immigrant life in twentieth-century United States, the instructive nature of the genre is laid bare. Both use a coupling between the genre of Magical Realism and Culinary Fiction to entice the reader into following the lives of each novel’s protagonist, lives communicative of how cultural oppression can persecute immigrant women in a foreign land unless a certain level of assimilation is attained.

Document Type

Thesis - unrestricted

Copyright

Copyright by the authors.

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