Dream House
Poets & Writers Magazine|November - December 2019
IN HER NEW BOOK, IN THE DREAM HOUSE, CARMEN MARIA MACHADO REIMAGINES THE MEMOIR FORM BY EXAMINING HER PERSONAL STORY OF DOMESTIC ABUSE USING DIFFERENT NARRATIVE TROPES AND SHINES NEW LIGHT ON THE HISTORY AND REALITY OF ABUSE IN QUEER RELATIONSHIPS.
Jera Brown
Dream House
FOR some writers the line between fantasy and reality is so fluid, they are able to uncover the poignant truths that can be found in that fringe space in between. This borderland is the realm of fantasy and horror writers like Shirley Jackson and magical realists like Jorge Luis Borges, two inspirations for Carmen Maria Machado, the author best known for her debut collection of speculative short stories, Her Body and Other Parties.

Magical realism, or nonrealism, is also fertile ground in which to write about ideas and identities that are generally muted or oppressed in dominant society. In a piece in the Atlantic that appeared shortly after her first book was published by Graywolf Press in 2017, Machado, a queer woman of Cuban descent, said nonrealism is a way of insisting on something different. “It’s a way to tap into aspects of being a woman that can be surreal or somehow liminal—certain experiences that can feel, even, like horror,” she said. “It allows you to defamiliarize certain topics like sexual violence that some people might unfortunately dismiss as ‘oh, just another story about rape.’ Nonrealism makes room for mythic expressions of the female experience and I think can be a way to satisfy the hunger for narratives in which women have rich inner lives.”

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Literary MagNet
Poets & Writers Magazine

Literary MagNet

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Poets & Writers Magazine

THE MEUSEUM OF HUMAN HISTORY

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Poets & Writers Magazine

The Sea Elephants

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Poets & Writers Magazine

The History of a Difficult Child

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Poets & Writers Magazine

The Sorrows of Others

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Poets & Writers Magazine

We Are a Haunting

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Poets & Writers Magazine

RADICAL ATTENTION

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Poets & Writers Magazine

The Fine Print

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Poets & Writers Magazine

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Poets & Writers Magazine

Blooming how she must

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