Vanessa Angélica Villarreal on Magical/Realism

“I wanted to look at trauma now, not as an individual thing but as a structural thing, as a collective thing, and as an ongoing thing.” In this virtual event hosted by The Word, A Storytelling Sanctuary, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal discusses the origins of her essay collection, Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders (Tiny Reparations Books, 2024), trauma in contemporary writing, and returning to fantasy and surrealism during a time of a crisis in a conversation with Angela María Spring.