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
Recommended Citation
Hester, Hillary Dawn, "Breaking the Bonds of Silence: The Immigrant Experience in Magical Realist Novels of Katherine Vaz and Chitra Divakaruni." (2003). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 833. https://dc.etsu.edu/etd/833
Copyright
Copyright by the authors.