Cover Image: Magical Realism for Non-Believers

Magical Realism for Non-Believers

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This was a beautiful and moving memoir. For those of us who are American-born children of immigrants, especially Colombians, this memoir will resonate. It explores a search of self through a reconnection of roots, and echoes a truth of beauty and violence that I know from personal experience. The language is gorgeous and evocative, reminiscent of heightened attention to language found in magical realism. The story is familiar but with a unique focus: an adult child in search of reconnecting with the father who abandoned her, in the country of her birth but a country that is at once familiar and strange.

"I had wanted Colombia to prove to me how beautiful, magical, wonderful she was, to show me why my father had chosen her over me."

I also loved the exploration of memory and how malleable it can be.

While some of the shifting between past and present was a bit jarring at times, it wasn't enough to impact my reading. It might be because I was reading on an eReader. Thank you to NetGalley for the eArc.

Review posted in Goodreads.

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In Magical Realism for Non Belivers, Fajardo takes the reader on her journey to reunite with her absent father in Colombia as she reckons with her connection/ disconnection from her culture and family lineage.

Short chapters moving through time catalogue the memories that give context to her time in Colombia, allowing the reader to understand the ways in which Fakardo is building a deeper sense of identity. Her writing is descriptive and straightforward, leaving space for a strong emotional honesty.

As an educator, this is a book I will happily share with my students looking for a mirror of how our sense of self, our connections, and whom we call family change over time.

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I feel kind of bad giving a memoir such a low rating but I just didn't find this all that compelling. I'd agree with other reviewers who've said it jumped around a bit too much, too. Not for me unfortunately.

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Magical realism, for those who wonder, is a literary genre perfected by Columbian novelist Gabriel García Márquez in his novel One Hundred Years of Solitude. A book with magical realism has a fictional world that seems like the modern world in which we live, yet the story contains a magical or other-worldly element that seems impossible to believe.

Anika Fajardo goes on a quest to find family and country in this nuanced and beautiful memoir. It starts with Farjardo’s journey to Columbia to visit with the father she can’t remember. She “wanted Columbia to prove to me how beautiful, magical, wonderful she was, to show me why my father had chosen her over me.”

Throughout the memoir, Farjado weaves together tales of the past, present, and future into a tapestry as colorful as the fabric worn by the Guambiano Indians. She introduces the readers to the magical land of Columbia, where her mother met her father shortly after Gabriel García Márquez published One Hundred Years of Solitude. Back when, “magical realism was part of the landscape, not a literary genre. When healers and lost daughters, secret affairs and illegitimate children were the rule, not the exception. Before literature stole away rainstorms of fireflies and sleeping sicknesses, these things existed in Columbia and were not flights of fancy.”

After a whirlwind romance between her mother and father, they traveled together to Minneapolis and married. Farjado imagines the soundtracks to their lives (who wouldn’t, when the church wedding ceremony includes beads, flowered skirts, and rings made out of spoons—accompanied by a Bob Dylan song about a big brass bed), and the decisions they must have struggled with as a newlywed couple living with relatives and attending universities in opposite directions.

Farjado can’t decide if their romance consists of the stuff of epic love stories or epic tragedies. All she knows is that at some point, her parents returned to Columbia, and discovered that the magic wasn’t enough to keep them together. She spends the rest of her childhood and teen years surrounded by her loving grandparents and wonderful mother, yet wondering about her father.

Like a skillful artist, Farjado paints layers of luminous understanding into the complicated portrait of family and country. Her father (an artist of renown in Columbia), is not just a man who abandoned his daughter for the love of country. Columbia is not just a corrupt country torn by wars between drug dealers. But each layer she paints comes at a cost.

It requires painting over previous assumptions and changing the tint and color to deepen the image and understanding. As Farjado paints each new revelation in her story, we come to realize the universality of her experience. We have all suffered from betrayal, misunderstanding, circumstances, and half-truths. And at some point, we must paint our own portrait of family and country that resonates with us.

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A beautifully-written memoir. Definitely, family does not have to be a "thing" stuck in one place but where your heart is, even if distance separate us from our love ones. Anika's story and journey is one of family, love, suffering, difficulties, ups and downs but at the end not very different from many families, a journey on trying to understand why the things in life happen and try to make sense of them. Anika's decision to visit the place of her roots and where her father is, her desire for understanding of the things that are part of her life through her father. I loved reading this book because it is always interesting for me to learn from other people's journey of understanding, of facing difficulties and discovery.

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A young woman raised in Minnesota decides to reconnect with her father in Columbia.What she discovers deserves to be held as a S.E. ret till you read this beautifully magical memoir.A search for identity family with lingering memories haunting sounds from her long separated parents marriage& the new life of her father.Haunting memoir.#netgalley#universityofminnesotapress

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At 21 years of age, Anika decides to visit Columbia to meet the father she doesn't really know. Leaving Minnesota where she grew up with her mother took courage. But she felt the need to know her roots.

I enjoyed reading how the relationship grew between her and her father. It was a very touching tale and the author did a good job at describing her feelings and emotions. And yes, family is what you make it.

* I was a provided an ARC from NetGalley and the publisher. It was my own decision to read and review this book.

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Fajardo's memoir is an absorbing read. Born in Columbia, but reared in Minnesota, she knew nothing about her father who still resided in South America. Gradually, she began corresponding with him and visited him when she was twenty one. She flashes back to her parents' fractured marriage, a story I found equally fascinating. Only, she discovers she has more family that she wasn't aware she had. I enjoyed reading her story and about a different culture,

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As I sit down to write this, I am thinking about all of the memoirs that I have read before this one. I gravitate towards memoirs about people in the food industry or those that hold inspiring stories. I enjoy reading about people that I know of or have heard of to get a better insight into their persona.

Anika Fajardo is not someone that you have ever heard of; she doesn’t hold a position of “fame” or is someone that has become known for their inspirational story. Her story is one that many people can relate to as similar to their own stories. She grew up in American in a single parent household. Her mother left her father and he lives in Colombia and has not been a part of her life. As she decides to travel to Colombia to see him, she comes to realize what makes a family and what is required of family.

I found the writing style to be enjoyable and easy to read. It read as if I was reading a fictional story however, the time jumps were a bit too much. I don’t mind reminiscing in a story but I feel as if it were a bit all over the place. If it was done in chapters that alternated time periods, it may have flowed a bit better.

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3.5 stars - Full review will be posted on my blog on 2nd April but can be moved upon request.

Interesting read about a woman who meets her father 20 years after her mother moved them away from him. She explores what it was like to grow up in a single parent as half-Columbian and meeting her father and being introduced to Columbian culture and trying to improve her Spanish.

She discovers years later that she has a brother who was born just a couple of weeks before she was. They navigate their family as adults and she has to re-learn the behaviours she developed thinking that she was an only child.

Overall, an interesting read but it didn't stand out.

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I love a well-written memoir and was attracted to this ARC (thanks, NetGalley) by the title as it's another literary genre very close to my heart. Very beautifully connected here in ways that keep the memoir "real" while still giving it that tinge of magic that's so alluring.

In context, the author's sort of obsession with the "detriment" of only childhood makes sense, but even so, it's also the one reason I didn't give it five stars. While the idea of only childhood is very important to the story, there was a point where I found myself thinking "alright, enough already, clearly it's not just an important aspect of your story anymore but a VERY STRONG OPINION that perhaps isn't shared by everyone."

Other than that, it's beautifully written, lyrically lovely and magically real.

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A moving tale of what it means to reconcile with what is lost. With ethereal writing that paints images in your head and an explosive denouement, this book made me lose sleep. I love it so much.

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Enticing narrative and easy to read book. Largely magical though the title is so beautifully put that it almost captures the essence of the narrative. Well done!

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I found the book both fascinating and sad as the author explores all the new surprises in her life. I don't want to give away what the surprise is that makes the author doubt her life, but I'll just say if it happen to me, I would also be angry and feel like an outsider when I shouldn't .
Loved all the people who Fajardo talks about in the book, but I wanted to know more about what happens next after she returns home, does she contact those she feels strongly about, do they see each other again? I just wonder.

I'm was privilege to be able to read this story before its release date, so this isn't the final draft, but I found nothing that threw off the story line.

Thank you University of Minneapolis Press for allowing to read this novel..

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I don’t like reviewing memoirs in the traditional sense because, well, how can you rate someone’s life story? But in this case, I will heartily say this memoir deserves 5 books. Fajardo grew up in Minnesota with her mother, never feeling like she fit in with the fair-skinned blonde kids. At 19, she travels to Columbia to meet her father to try to piece together their shared past. Her father is thrilled to see her and he and his wife try to make her feel welcome in this colorful and dangerous place. He is an artist and photographer and it’s in his art where she begins to see his love for her and for his native Columbia. Slowly she begins to unravel the story of her parents and why her mother divorced her father. Many years later, after she has found her own love and begun her own family, Fajardo is surprised to learn another secret that adds another facet to her identity. There is another trip to Columbia, another chance to understand, another attempt to reach out, forgive, make amends. Her identity is constantly shifting and I believe the magic she refers to in the title is in the mysterious alchemy that makes family. What combination of blood, shared experience, and time unites people? Ultimately, Fajardo finds joy and peace in her messy, complicated family. // This book deals with those universal questions of identity and love and I found Fajardo’s writing to be moving and insightful. I’m not sure if the title accurately reflects the story though, but it didn’t take away from my enjoyment. It was a pleasure to read.

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Anika Fajardo re-meets her father at the age of 21, older than she was when her parents themselves met. Fajardo was born in Colombia and hadn't been back since her parents' divorce. She grew up in Minnesota without contact with her father until she began exchanging letters with him in her Minnesota-nice rebellious teens. It wasn't that her mother Nancy hated Anika's father Renzo, exactly. She just didn't seem to want him in their lives.

The magical realism part is Fajardo imagining the alternate reality of herself growing up in Colombia--or maybe not growing up, since she required surgery as a toddler for a problem that might have been less likely to be detected or treated. A while after her visit to Colombia, Fajardo finds out a secret her father has kept from her that births another wave of imaginings.

I followed the story with interest and found Fajardo's observations and images compelling.

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Darn. I keep forgetting that I am not the right person to read and review memoirs. I keep realizing that this is not the genre for me but gosh darn it if the title and cover didn’t pull me in!

This is what it is. It’s a memoir of a daughter looking to re-connect with her father and to define what family means to her.

I thought that it was good but I read it after “The Poet X” and that is a hard book to follow. It was an interesting enough story. I just felt that it was lacking emotion. Everything was told a little too matter of factly for me. (I know, i know, it’s a memoir...)

Thank you to NetGalley and the University of Minnesota press for an advanced copy of this book.

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Magical Realism for Non-Believers by Anika Fajardo

Love, blood, time. That’s what makes up a family according to our author. And she should know.

Born in Colombia and raised as an only child in Minnesota by her American mother, Anika is very desperate to meet her Colombian father. She has features of both parents and cannot reconcile who she sees in the mirror.

As a young adult, Anika ventures to Colombia alone and things begin to fall into place. Faint memories of her childhood start to come back as the days go by. Father and daughter are starting to connect-or reconnect. Anika gets few answers, but quiets her resentment toward the father who is more a stranger than a parent. She is trying earnestly to create the family she has always missed.

A return trip there over a decade later fills in the many gaps she has felt throughout her life. No spoilers here, but many unexpected things have transpired since her last visit. This trip resolves any feeling of abandonment she has felt all her life. A new family has formed in ways she never imagined years earlier.

This story will appeal to readers who like descriptions of travel to other countries and who have some rudimentary Spanish. It may even help those with family issues of their own to resolve. Who knows? With magical realism, all things are possible.

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Anika Fajardo tells her story of being born in a small town in Colombia to a Colombian man and an American woman. In the telling of her story, Fajardo bounces back and forth from her earliest years, to the relationship between her parents, to the life she eventually led with her mother in Minnesota. She eventually visits Colombia again as an adult and develops a lasting relationship with her father. Along the way Fajardo also learns she has a brother, which adds another dimension to her idea of family.

Magical Realism is a story about families and relationships that create bonds that continually grow and change.

I give this book 3.5 stars.

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Not quite foreign, not quite domestic.

There is something about the above line that beautifully expresses the assumptions made about mixed race children, particularly when it wasn’t as common in our author’s youth as it is today. Skin color, ethnic features tend to be used as a map for other people to ‘tell your story’, which more often than not is wrong. Then there are expectations we cling to ourselves, as Anika Fajardo wanted to embrace her Colombian side and finally get to know the father, Renzo, who had been absent from her life for over two decades. Anika wanted to love and relate to the things a Colombian should, like authors and spicy foods. Of course, we all fall under the spell of stereotypes for ourselves and others. A man of secrets, and yet welcoming her as if they saw each other everyday, he greets her at the airport. The point of her existence begins first with the love story between her mother Nancy and her Colombian father Renzo. Once his student, Nancy fell in passionate love with the charming artist, having come to Colombia for a semester of college abroad in 1970 at the age of Nineteen. Eventually, when marriage came and baby made three, the romance wore thin faced with the harsh realties of financial difficulties, isolation, lonely nights for Nancy while rumors of Renzo and other women were impossible to ignore. Her job teaching wasn’t much better, how does one end things when love is dead? Nancy made a life altering choice, one that solidified the future for their daughter Anika, who though born in Colombia would be raised in Minnesota, America.

A new family takes shape, a family made of two, mother and daughter. Through the years there are step siblings that come and go, but nothing that sticks. It always goes back to just the two of them. That her whole family is split, divided between Colombia and Minnesota, a family she will not meet until she is 21 seems more fantasy through her childhood, her mother never quite denying her access to her father but not encouraging it either. Her father is letters, her father is a phantom. It wasn’t always for selfish reasons her mother chose to steal her away to America, there were health problems, dangers in Colombia that could be the difference between life or death. Naturally, Anika spends much of her time wondering how different a person she would have become had she and her mother remained. Culture molds us like nothing else! Much like immigrants, there is always a divide in people who are torn between two cultures, as she states “not quite foreign, not quite domestic.”

Her visit to Colombia gives her missing pieces to the puzzle of her parents early relationship and her own father’s life after. There is love, but to him she was always that baby whom he last held, not the full-grown young woman who stands before him. She is like a ghost, looking so much like her mother’s twin. Too, she explores the things that drove her mother to make such a life altering decision for them all, simply by visiting the places her mother once lived. Colombia is as much a mysterious family member as her father, sticking out like a sore thumb when she first arrives, covered up where women dress far more provocatively (by American standards anyway) confidently comfortable as sexual beings, fully at home in their bodies, she can feel her artlessness like a sore tooth. Tasting the sweetness of ‘unfamiliar fruit’, vigilant of the possibility of intruders, aware of the threat of drug cartels while in the back of her mind, her hunger to meet her father far surpasses the fact that Colombia at the time of her visit was ‘one of the most dangerous countries on the earth.’ With the presence of his wife Ceci, who is kind enough, there are two strangers for her to get to know. Renzo and Anika do share a few memories, one story in particular she tells him that he too remembers, one she hadn’t even realized he was a part of. Memory is slippery but so much harder to fully recall are the earliest ones. Reunions aren’t always full of deep meaningful conversations, intimacy takes time, they share DNA but they are still strangers. Her father talks a lot, but ‘says nothing.’ Seeing his moods, and understanding her mother’s ways solidifies for Nancy why they fell apart, and how it never would have been a harmonious home. Even five years after her visit to Colombia, there remains more to her family story, big things that were kept from her that Renzo delivers in the form of his “enigmatic emails’. At first, it may be more than she wanted to know. Her father, that man whom could cause women to swoon with his ‘disarming charm’ is both ‘overly emotional and fiercely cut off’, the master of his own story and Anika’s because there are more chapters, untold surprises.

There is death, danger, cultural shock, love, loss, secrets and a growing family. It is about desperately wanting to know your roots, to find the missing pieces of yourself and to finally meet a parent who is like a phantom limb. It is the odd coincidences of paraellel lives, the strange experience of coming to love strangers who are your blood, the peculiar curiosity of what ifs, the wonderment that another you could have easily come to fruition had life taken different turns.

Publication Date: April 16, 2019

University of Minnesota Press

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