Magic Realism as Postcolonial Aesthetics in African and Afrodiasporic Literatures

Abstract

From their first novels, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Boubacar Boris Diop, and Toni Morrison have garnered critical attention as realist writers. If myth and legend were part of their literary productions, these were more often than not embellishments in the form of tales embedded within the main story. Yet Ngũgĩ’s sixth novel Matigari (1986), Morrison’s fifth novel Beloved (1987), and Diop’s sixth novel Doomi Golo (2003; translated into English as Doomi Golo, The Hidden Notebooks, 2017), are considered political fables that put myth and magic at the forefront. This observance raises questions as to why these engaging realist novelists shift to a magic realist approach. Is it appropriate to describe and to combat the modernity and complexity of the postcolonial system with an essentially anachronistic trope? What does magic realism allow them to express that cannot be achieved through bare realism?