Do you believe in magic?: Yamashita’s Magical Realism as Human Ecology in the Era of Globalization

• In Event: Representing Human Rights: Latin America and the Global Market

Abstract

Karen Tei Yamashita’s Through the Arc of the Rain Forest tells the story of the commodification and devastation of Amazonian resources in the name of technological advancement and progress through the lens of magical realism. Yamashita, a Japanese Brazilian, also uses her narrative to explore the global flows of human trafficking and the exploitation of labor, nature, and human eccentricities, even as they relate to the search for a magical balm to heal human suffering. This paper considers how the genre of magical realism enables Yamashita to narrate the story of global capitalism in a way that complicates any easy assumptions about Brazilian, and Latin American, agency within a globalized world.

Author

• Nicole L Sparling, Central Michigan University