Publisher's Synopsis
In Magical/Realism, poet and essayist Vanessa Angelica Villarreal intimately and fearlessly explores the many complicated girlhoods of being a working-class, first-generation, Mexican American daughter of a cumbia musician. She loved grunge and hated Selena. She found refuge in 80s fantasy movies and in the half-acre of swampy pines behind her Houston home. And she navigated a country that never really saw her - or her family's - value beyond their labour. These essays sharply weave together memoir with explorations of race, class, and gender, using music and pop culture as their axis. In one essay, Vanessa writes about Nirvana's impact on her life as an outcast; in another she looks critically at the Latina body as a site of trouble and all that gets projected onto it. In 'When We All Loved a Show About a Wall,' Vanessa provides a crucial reading of Game of Thrones, showing its radical political commentaries on borders, asylum, migrant rights, and ICE. And in 'The Fantasy of Healing,
