![]() ![]() ![]() Every story has its own rules, its own internal logic. ![]() Short stories are the perfect vehicle for magical feminism because each one functions as its own encapsulated world. In these texts, women use extraordinary power in order to affect their wills magic enables them to re-create the world as they want it to be. Magical feminism also subverts the restrictive conditions of reality to allow female-identifying characters to reclaim agency. There could be demons manning the cash register at the grocery store, ghosts riding the bus, or people turning into animals. The mundane and the impossible coexist to achieve a defamiliarization that mirrors the strangeness of everyday female experience. ![]() Magical feminism-a subgenre of magical realism that’s usually employed in a feminist and postcolonial context-embodies these contradictions, producing them on the page by melding the surreal and the quotidian.Ĭontradictions in magical feminism are accepted as part of the general female experience: women can be both witches and healers, can bear the burdens of sexual trauma and still seek pleasure. Women construct multiple personas to make themselves palatable in different contexts, temper emotion for fear of repercussions, and endure such constant scrutiny that they must become endlessly adaptable. To be a woman, or female-identifying, is to be a creature of contradictions. Sign up for our newsletter to get submission announcements and stay on top of our best work. ![]()
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