Every year, come fall, I can’t help but think just how perfect the concept of “spooky season” fits into Latinx culture and traditions. While we’re an incredibly diverse bunch, to say the least, many of us still have some sort of connection to the supernatural – whether by personal experience or by hearing the stories and legends our elders inevitably shared. We’ve learned to coexist with magic, knowing it is all around us and has been all around us throughout our history: from the way our ancestors understood the universe in the times before the European conquest to the movies, TV shows, and even books that Latinx folks consume and create in modern times. For us, Magical Realism isn’t just another genre of fiction; it’s a part of our daily lives.
Of course, being the bookworm that I am (I was proudly named “most likely to always have her nose in a book” in my 8th grade yearbook), I can’t help but feel drawn to stories that explore magic and the way we routinely coexist with it. As luck would have it (or, some would say, by work of magic), I recently stumbled upon two Latina authors who captivated me with their fresh and original takes on the Magical Realism genre; both of them have found unique and alluring ways of imbuing their work with enough Latinx magic to hook their readers from the start.
Mexican-American author, poet, and painter Raquel Vázquez Gilliland explores myths, folklore, and magic through nature, complicated family dynamics (sibling rivalry, absent parents, toxic extended families, and caregivers who try their best but might fall short), and sex (yes, Latina women can love and enjoy sex as long as it is on our own terms and not tied to an outdated stereotype that turns us into sex-obsessed dolls). At the intersection of these three themes, Vázquez Gilliland shows magic manifesting itself in the most beautiful (and the scariest) of ways.
In her first adult romance novel, Witch of Wild Things, Vázquez Gilliland shares the story of the Flores sisters: Sage, Teal, Sky aka the Witches of Wild Things. Each of them has a unique “gift” as Nadia, their great-aunt and main caretaker calls it. The novel follows Sage as she navigates moving back home and dealing with a fractured relationship with her sister (and herself, in a way) Teal and the reality of life after her sister Sky’s death. What should have been an easy move back home ends up being more than she had bargained for when she ends up working with her ex-high school crush, Tennessee Reyes, at Cranberry Rose Farm.
Lightning In Her Hands, the second book in the Wild Magic series, follows middle sister Sage as she attempts to “fix” herself and take back the little piece of her gift that their absent mother took from her the day she left. Add a fake marriage of convenience to her very attractive, very much in love with her childhood best friend, and a relationship with her cold-yet-sort-of-loving (in her way) grandmother Sonia, and you get the perfect mix of sexy and emotional.
Each character (not just in the Wild Magic series, but in Vázquez Gilliland’s previous novels, too) is so deeply proud of their Latinx heritage that they don’t, for a second, deny the existence of magic: the fact that magic exists around us is simply a fact of life, as much a part of our world as the oxygen we breathe. “People tell me my work is magical realism, but I was raised to understand that magic is just life, and the aspects of magic in my work come from my culture, experience, and familial upbringing,” the author tells Latina Media Co.
Through her writing and magical storytelling, Vázquez Gilliland has found a way of paying it forward, so to speak. She says, “As a child, books were my best friends and parents. They saved my life, and I loved – and still love – them so much that the best job I could imagine was writing them.”
And I also want to highlight R. M. Romero, an international best-selling Jewish Latina author of fairy tales for children and adults alike, obviously featuring Magical Realism. She spends her summers helping maintain Jewish cemeteries in Europe (although she describes herself as a “queer, childless cat person who is afflicted with wanderlust and obsessed with folklore”).
Her Latinx and Jewish heritage shine through in her work: beautifully written verse novels that show both cultures’ deep appreciation, love, and respect for family, magic, and death. “With Death’s Country, I chose to write in verse as a homage to Dante’s The Divine Comedy and Homer’s epic poems, both of which I drew from when I was crafting the novel,” she tells me. “I also wanted the book to sound like a song, since music plays a huge part in the story and the original Orpheus myth.” The book is also heavily influenced by her personal experiences, as she tells Latina Media Co: “I wrote Death’s Country to explore one particular conception of the underworld, drawing from dreams I had as a teenager and the very Latinx city that I live in: Miami.”
Another one of her novels, The Ghosts of Rose Hill is inspired by her work in Jewish cemeteries in Europe and some of the uncannier things she’s come across while hanging out here. “I hang out in cemeteries a lot, so I’m constantly surrounded by reminders of mortality. Every forest in Eastern Europe is haunted, by memory and perhaps other things too,” Romero shares. In Judaism as in Latinx cultures, death is viewed as an undeniable part of life, and caring for the dead is one of the most selfless acts of kindness one can perform, which is why Romero says her characters tend to be psychopomps who encounter and develop relationships with ghosts and travel to various versions of the afterlife.
On the topic of Magical Realism, Romero says, “I can’t imagine writing a book that’s purely ‘realistic.’ For me, ‘realism’ involves a certain amount of magic. We live in an ever-expanding universe where black holes sing and bumblebees defy the laws of physics to fly. How is that not magic?” After listening to her speak and reading her writing, I agree with her: magic is everywhere and anything.
So join me in celebrating spooky season by grabbing a cafecito and diving into the alternate worlds and realities created by women like Vázquez Gilliland and Romero – reading and so being transported to these universes for a few hours is what’s truly magic. As Romero so accurately tells me, “Magic is anything you do that alters reality. Writing is magic, music is magic. Love itself can even be magic.”
