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I’ve always loved magical realism, ever since I stumbled across Ana Castillo’s So Far From God in the 1990s. That tale of four wild sisters and their resilient mother stuck with me. Part of it was the humor of the storytelling, and part of it was the characters’ various struggles against capitalism and misogyny. On top of that, it was the strong women populating the pages with their magic.
Over the years, I’ve continued to be drawn to magical realism. In case you’re not familiar, magical realism is a notoriously hard-to-define genre. It’s distinct from fantasy, even though magic typically plays a significant role. Generally more heavily weighted toward general fiction than fantasy, the magic in magical realism mingles with, well, realism.
The gist of the matter is that in magical realism, the story world tends to look a lot like ours except for the presence of magic. And “magic” can refer to all manner of phenomena, big and small. Sometimes that means some characters have special powers (like being able to bake emotions into food so that anyone who eats it experiences those emotions) and other times it means things are possible in this story world that aren’t supposed to be in ours — at least, not according to the laws of physics (for example, entire cities can be cloaked from the rest of the world).
If you want to read more about the genre, Emma Allmann’s essay “What is Magical Realism?” is a great place to start. But here, I’m interested in a specific phenomenon: feminist magical realist books. It’s an interesting trend, albeit not a new one, and it makes for some powerful reading.
The books on this list range from mostly realism with smatterings of magic to magic-infused realism that’s not a far cry from fantasy. Whatever you’re looking for, I hope you find it here!
Feminist Magical Realism Books
Ours by Phillip B. Williams
Before slavery was abolished in the United States, Saint destroyed plantations and killed their enslavers, then led the newly liberated to a town called Ours. This is the epic story of Ours — a community magically protected so that white folk can neither chart it nor enter it — and its inhabitants. Written in the kind of prose you might expect from a poet-turned-novelist, it’s a hefty and spellbinding read that breathes life into an entire community. It’s also filled to the brim with strong women and a brand of magical realism steeped in Hoodoo traditions. It’s a thick and complex book, but worth every second of the time it’ll take you to read it. This is the kind of story that lingers long after you’ve finished it.
The Fortunes of Jaded Women by Carolyn Huynh
It all starts with a visit to a psychic. The prediction: the family will experience a wedding, a funeral, and the birth of a grandson (an occurrence believed to be impossible due to the family curse). With that, three estranged sisters must attempt to reconcile their differences before it’s too late. As the question of who’s going to die looms over them, their petty differences and the generational trauma carried over from the impacts of the US’s war in Vietnam threaten to prevent them from coming back together as a family. This intergenerational magical realist tale of three generations of Vietnamese American women is utterly captivating.
The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods
This is a sweet book with romance mixed in with the magical elements. It’s about a bookshop that exists outside of time and space, kind of waiting for the right people to find it. It’s also about people who are lost and trying to be found. The three storylines come together in interesting ways, and darker aspects of reality (like domestic abuse and war) lurk in each of their lives. The novel is set in Dublin and Woods brings in some peripheral history, especially around Ireland’s mother and baby homes. Even as it grapples with real-world contexts, the magic in this story world is of the healing variety, and the characters who make their way to the titular lost bookshop find healing and discover strength they didn’t know they had.
The Enchanted Hacienda by J.C. Cervantes
As if owning a flower farm wasn’t magical enough, the Estrada family’s flower farm is enchanted, and each of the family members has a magic that connects to the flowers they grow. Well, everyone but Harlow. But when Harlow loses her job, breaks up with her obnoxious boyfriend, and leaves NYC, she can’t think of anywhere to go except back to her family’s farm in Mexico. As she struggles to reintegrate herself and accept her lack of magic while surrounded by so much of everyone else’s magic, she meets Ben (yup, this one has a romance, too!). It’s a charming story with amazing world-building and a great story.
Daughter of the Merciful Deep by Leslye Penelope
Set in the fictional Black community of Awenasa during the early 1900s, Daughter of the Merciful Deep follows Jane Edwards as she tries to save her town. Jane hasn’t spoken above a whisper since she suffered a childhood trauma, but when government officials come to town (along with someone who should be dead) intent on building a dam and burying Awenasa beneath the floodwaters, it’s up to Jane to save her beloved community. The book grapples with histories of racism and drowned Black towns, and what emerges as a counter to these things is traditional African spiritual and cultural practices. Jane’s journey to magic is a nuanced and beautiful thing to track.
The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo
Taking its inspiration from Chinese Fox mythologies, The Fox Wife is a magical realist mystery. It’s set in the early 1900s and features 2 interwoven storylines. One is Bao, an aging detective whose gift is that he can literally hear when a lie is told. Quite an impressive gift for a private detective. Bao has been asked to figure out the identity of a young woman found dead on a restaurant’s doorstep. The trail leads him in a direction that holds a lot of personal interest for him: to foxes. I don’t mean the animal, I mean the shapeshifting deities of Chinese legend. Which brings us to the other storyline, which belongs to Snow. She’s a wronged fox mother who’s seeking vengeance, and as the novel progresses, Snow’s and Bao’s storylines begin to bleed into each other in fascinating ways.
Night for Day by Roselle Lim
At times comical and at other times heartrending, Roselle Lim’s novel had my attention from the get-go. When exes Camille Buhay and Ward Dunbar bump into each other in London, they figure they might as well give their relationship another go. But their plans to meet after each of them finishes the first day of their respective new jobs fall through when it turns out neither of them can leave their workplaces. As in: they’re magically prevented from doing so. They’ve somehow found themselves caught up in a centuries-long war between the gods, and the situation gets dire as they realize there’s a lot more on the line than their livelihoods. This one leans more toward the magical than the real since so much of the book is given over to the fantastical in-between space of their job site, so it’s a good bet if you’re feeling like a heavy dose of magic.
Weyward by Emilia Hart
It’s hard not to want to read a novel about witches during the autumn months, so I’d suggest giving in to that urge with Weyward. Emilia Hart’s debut novel grapples with histories of women being labeled witches across the centuries — from the Salem Witch Trials to the present, and everywhere in between. Told through three interlocking storylines, it’s about the strength of women in the face of oppression, violence, abuse, and all the other ills that attend misogyny. The story is beautifully written, and it made this not-particularly emotional reader shed tears (in the good way). As the storylines reach their culmination, all the history and emotion coalesce into a powerful conclusion that will stay with you long after you’ve put the book down.
