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Navascués, Logaine

University of British Columbia

Both magical realist fiction and the graphic novel as a form have been widely recognized as counternarratives with the power to destabilize the dominant literary forms¬ of the Western world by their ability to showcase underrepresented voices and stories from the margins. Their relationship to trauma has also been studied in depth, as they allow their creators to re-present the unrepresentable nature of historic, collective or personal traumatic events. However, the interaction between comics and magical realism has not yet garnered much academic attention, let alone in relation to literature for young readers. With this thesis, I aim to bridge this gap by analyzing how magical realist fiction and the graphic novel work together to highlight the traumatic experiences of marginal voices in children’s literature. In my academic paper, I first identify the key elements present in magical realist literature following Wendy B. Faris’s studies, and the underlying principles of comics creation based on Scott McCloud’s seminal work on the form, and explore their relationship to trauma. I then discuss other visions and versions of trauma of growing up, including the effects of bullying, racial discrimination, immigration and intergenerational trauma. These findings, along with Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen’s visual grammar, serve as a framework for my close reading of Kiku Hughes’ young adult graphic novel Displacement through a magical realist lens. Using this same framework, I then reflect on my creative process writing the middle grade graphic novel Nuna and the Nose. The story combines Nuna’s first-person point of view and a first-nose perspective to showcase Nuna’s fragmented sense of identity. This magical realist device enables me to address the complexity of Nuna’s traumatic experience as an immigrant dealing with bullying, self-image issues and anxiety, and her disconnect from her own roots. This hybrid thesis highlights the power of combining the multimodal form of comics and the multidimensional scope of magical realism to portray the voices of diverse, underrepresented characters in their multilayered experience of trauma.

Text

2023-12-14

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/86962

Children's Literature

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/