Cover design by Kaitlin Kall, Penguin Random House

ABOUT MAGICAL /REALISM

Upon becoming a new mother, award-winning poet Vanessa Angélica Villarreal was called to Mexico to reconnect to her ancestors and recover her grandmother’s story, only to return to the sudden loss of her marriage, home, and reality.

In MAGICAL/REALISM: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders, Villarreal crosses into the erasure of memory and self, fragmented by migration, borders, and colonial and intimate violence, reconstructing her story with pieces of American pop culture, and the music, video games, and fantasy that have helped her make sense of it all. 

The border between the real and imagined is a speculative space where we can remember, or re-world, what has been lost—and each chapter of MAGICAL/REALISM engages in this essential project of worldbuilding.

In one essay, Villarreal examines her own gender performativity through Nirvana and Selena; in another, she offers a radical but crucial racial reading of Jon Snow in Game of Thrones; and throughout the collection, she explores how fantasy can help us interpret and heal when grief feels insurmountable. She reflects on the moments of her life that are too painful to remember—her difficult adolescence, her role as the eldest daughter of Mexican immigrants, her divorce—and finds a way to archive her history and map her future(s) with the hope and joy of fantasy and magical thinking.

Villareal’s sharp cultural commentary has appeared in the New York Times, Harper’s Bazaar, The Cut, BuzzFeed News, and more. She brings her poetic writing to every essay and every layer of cultural criticism, making MAGICAL/REALISM perfect for readers with an interest in music and its many intersections, as well as readers with an interest in Latine stories; border stories; coming-of-age stories; and explorations of pop culture.

With MAGICAL/REALISM, Villarreal broadens our understanding of what memoir and cultural criticism can be. This is a wise, tender, and essential collection that carves a path toward a new way of remembering and telling our stories.

MAGICAL / REALISM: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders

Published May 14, 2024

Longlisted for the National Book Award in Nonfiction

Nominated for the 2024 Golden Poppy Awards in Nonfiction by CALIBA (California Independent Booksellers Alliance)

Kirkus Best Essay Collections of 2024

NPR’s Books We Love 2024

Reader’s Digest Best Books of 2024

A Best Book of 2024 (so far) by Book Riot

Most Anticipated by Book Riot, Hip Latina, Electric Lit, Screen Rant, Audible, GoodReads, and Write or Die

From award-winning poet Vanessa Angélica Villarreal comes a brilliant, singular collection of essays that looks to music, fantasy, and pop culture to excavate and reimagine what has been disappeared by the forces of migration and colonialism.

PRAISE

“With brilliant insight and masterful writing, Villarreal examines fantasy at close range…the magic of this collection is the elasticity and brilliance with which Villarreal is able to take critical analysis and connect it to her own experiences. A wondrous book that will change the way you think about fantasy and magic.” —Kirkus Reviews (Starred) [LINK]

“The fresh perspective and distinctive voice of poet Villarreal drive this smart collection … the meditations on fantasy narratives incisively probe how fictional worlds reflect and intersect with the real one. Readers will be spellbound.” —Publisher’s Weekly (Starred) [LINK]

“Like the Witchers, whose avatars she assumes in the video games she played to heal from her white ex-husband’s abuse and betrayal, poet and cultural critic Vanessa Angélica Villarreal leaps across seemingly insurmountable boundaries in this stunning book of interwoven essays and shattered, artfully reassembled memoir.” —Ann Powers, critic and correspondent, NPR Music

“A revelation… to be studied, savored, re-read and discussed.” —Melissa Castillo Planas, Latinx Pop Magazine [IN-DEPTH REVIEW LINK]

“This nonfiction read is one of my favorite books of the year and it is my mission to make more people read it ... I slapped my desk in emphasis while thinking about this book again just now. It’s that good.” —Vanessa Diaz, Book Riot

“I’m a bigger fan now of Vanessa Angélica Villarreal’s than I was before. … Even in the afterword, after more than 300 pages of creative and intellectual excellence, she still confesses her imposter syndrome, an honesty I can understand. And I guess this is what I most admire about Villarreal. She wrote her way out of an emotional and psychic catastrophe, and recorded the clear evidence of her brilliance. Which is a lesson for us all (especially the writers): we can write our way out of pain and doubt, and arrive in a space where the real and the magic can be the same beautiful thing. —Pablo Peschiera, ANMLY Lit

“Magical/Realism is the perfect non-fiction work for fiction lovers. Vanessa Angélica Villarreal’s essays explore her journey of reconnection with her heritage and ancestors in Mexico while using current popular media, like Game of Thrones, to explore cultural erasure and the damages of migration and colonialism.” —Screen Rant

“Not only is this intimate essay collection a healing listen, but it repositions cultural criticism on the map as a meaningful and resonant form of catharsis.” —Audible

“Magical/Realism is staggeringly good; it’s been ages since I’ve been this moved, challenged, and devastated by an essay collection. An energetic, paradigm-shifting book.”
—Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House

“A stunning, provocative, and essential book that lights up the mind. Villarreal’s ferocious imagination is matched only by a roving intellect and so much heart that these essays will stay with you for a long time after reading. One of my favorite nonfiction collections of the past decade.”
—Jeff VanderMeer, New York Times bestselling author

“Villarreal possesses endless talent. As she connects the dots between the various extraordinary and mundane realisms that haunt our daily lives, she displays a poet’s command of form, making this work sing with resonance. A banger.”
—Camonghne Felix, author of Dyscalculia: A Love Story of Epic Miscalculation

“Vanessa Angelica Villarreal’s Magical/Realism is the impossible book that does so much so well and still retains a distinct and propulsive voice. Villarreal’s formal variousness illuminates and usefully complicates her subjects, but the bedrock upon which she engages her intellectual might is a big beating heart—there are lines here that made me, a non-crier, actually well-up. About her father who taught himself to play guitar while his migrant laborer parents worked, Villarreal writes: ‘He was not a rare mind dreaming in a place that suppresses dreams with debt and labor. What is rare is that he almost made it.’ Often, for Villarreal, tenderness presents itself as a kind of rage, a rage that emerges from an ability to perceive the interiority of the harmed. Our loss, how rare this rage—without any accompanying smug back-patting—feels in the contemporary critical discourse. Our luck, to find in such abundance here.”
—Kaveh Akbar, New York Times bestselling author of Martyr!