International Journal of Advanced Research and Development

Authors
R Vijayaragavan, Muzafar Ahmad Bhat

Abstract
Magic realist techniques help Naylor create a world that lures the reader into its depths forcing him/her to question accepted ways of perceiving reality. An urban, realistic discourse set in New York enters into conflict with an archetypal, mythical discourse that presents the cosmology of Willow Springs, unfolding a dialogical encounter between two cultures, American and African. A mixture of genres and narrative conventions characteristic of different literary traditions produces a mosaic that functions as a revision of traditional narratives. Storytelling, oral tradition and folklore practices occupy a predominant position, conforming to anthropological magic realism. The slippage between two codes of reality, the natural and the supernatural, implies the crossing of multiple boundaries, between the spiritual and the material, animate and inanimate, life and death, nature and technology and ultimately between reality and fantasy.