April 15, 2024
A political, personal, and immensely readable collection about the intermingling of fantasy and reality. With brilliant insight and masterful writing, Villarreal examines fantasy at close range, blending personal essay with intellectual criticism. The author ranges widely, examining racism, her childhood as the eldest daughter of Mexican immigrants, the gender performances of Kurt Cobain and Selena, and the fraught circumstances of her divorce. At the heart of the narrative is a significant question: "What does the constant state of loss after colonization, enslavement, and dispossession do to the collective imagination?" Furthermore, who has the privilege of imagination, and how does that shape our collective reality? In this memorable narrative, fantasy is involved in many different things: the video game where becoming a witcher is a means to heal after the betrayal of divorce; the Sphinx Gate in The Neverending Story; the American dream, "a fairy tale, after all"; Villareal's search for her grandmother's records, lost from national archives due to gendered violence; movies in which an all-white cast is still the norm; the author's own mental health struggles; and Latine writers being forced to carry the label "magical realism" no matter their genre. Where there is fantasy, there is also magic, and 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. Magic itself, as the author indicates, is often treated as "a feminized, infantilized, racialized practice done by primitive or unwell people, despite its history in the healing arts. Ancestral knowledge is reduced to 'magic' to strip it of legitimacy, shamed, ridiculed, or framed as dangerous because it is how disempowered people...have historically healed, rebelled, and reclaimed their narratives." Villareal expertly reclaims those narratives here. A wondrous book that will change the way you think about fantasy and magic.
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Starred review from May 6, 2024
The fresh perspective and distinctive voice of poet Villarreal (Beast Meridian) drive this smart collection. The power of fantasy stories looms large in these essays, as in “After the World-Breaking, World-Building,” where Villarreal argues that the genre acts as a conduit for conceiving of more equitable ways to organize society. Picking up this theme in “The Fantasy of Healing,” Villareal contends that in the video game Witcher 3, the option to use “feminized folk practices to heal victims, homes, and communities” in lieu of enacting violent retribution on wrongdoers raises the possibility of alternative forms of justice rooted in healing rather than punishment. “In the Shadow of the Wolf” suggests that Nordic mythology’s ascendant popularity during the Obama era can be attributed to a “cultural desire” for “the return of white male dominance, free from colonial baggage or accountability.” Other selections are more personal, as when Villarreal recounts how in high school her white boyfriend’s mother sought to drive a wedge in their relationship by hiring her as a maid. The sharp commentary on Assassin’s Creed, Horizon Zero Dawn, and other video games prove the under-analyzed medium is ripe for rigorous intellectual engagement, and the meditations on fantasy narratives incisively probe how fictional worlds reflect and intersect with the real one. Readers will be spellbound. Agent: Amanda Orozco, Transatlantic Agency.