Magical Realism in Literary Quest for Modern Afro-American Identity: Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby and Gloria Naylor's Mama Day

Abstract

This article engages with the fiction African American women who turn to the Caribbean region in search of “their mothers gardens.” It also explores their extraordinary affinity with magical realist fiction produced by South American writers. It argues that magical realism and fiction of such writers as Toni Morrison or Gloria Naylor represent the same mode of writing and that this mode of writing is used with the same intention to reconstruct identities in those minority cultures that have experienced uprooting and oppression.