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MAGIC REALISM AS A CONVERGE OF POSTCOLONIALISM AND POSTMODERNISM: 

A STUDY OF SOME SELECTED WORKS 

 

Prof. Ifeyinwa J. Ogbazi 

Department of English Language and Literature 

Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka 

& 

Ijeoma Lena Osita 

Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu  

University Igbariam Campus 

Email: ijeomalena@gmail.com 

                                  

Abstract 

Magic realism is a term in literature that combines realism and the fantastic in such a way that 

magical elements grow organically out of the reality portrayed. Unfortunately magic realism has 

become a debased term. Some critics see magic realism as shallow, dangerous, primitive and a term 

that ought to be done away with. Some critics see it with a little positivity; a term arising from 

unevenly developed society and a brand name for exoticism. Therefore these critics and many writers 

have failed to extend magic realism beyond postcolonialism. They tend to associate magic realism to 

just postcolonial countries. This paper therefore examines magic realism as a term that constitutes a 

point of convergence between postcolonialism and postmodernism. This paper argues that magic 

realism is not shallow but it is a productive, and an innovational fictional mode. Most importantly, 

magic realism has also contributed to the growth of postmodern literary sensibilities.  Magic realism 

is a mode of expression worldwide and an aesthetics of necessity which has literary and postmodern 

currents running through it. In The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar, Syl Cheney Coker was able to 

oscillate between the past and present. He exposes the vanity and uselessness of power, the ultimate 

failure of colonizers, the futility of war and the power of love; using magic realism.  Also in The 

Icarus Girl Oyeyemi Helen was able re-invent magic realism. She merges West African cultural 

beliefs, folklore with European Folklore and fairytale. This narrative strategy reveals Oyeyemi’s 

ambition to position herself as a globally recognized magic realist writer. This paper while employing 

the postcolonial and postmodernist theory examines magical realism as a term that helps in the 

development of our multicultural and postmodern literary sensibilities.  

Keywords: Magic realism, Postcolonialism, Convergence, Postmodernism 

 

Introduction    

Magic realism can be traced shortly after the First World War in Europe. The term was introduced by 

Franz Roh (1890-1965). He introduced the term in 1925. For him magical realism was presented as a 

reaction to expressionism’s more abstract style and to mark a return to realism. Expressionism was a 

movement in literature and other parts of Germany which emphasized and supported arts departure 

from realistic portrayal or depiction of events, incidents and situation in the world by expressing their 

visionary or powerfully emotionally states of the mind. Expressionism which seeks to convey 

personal inner experience through the distortion of natural images had run its course.  Several artists 

began to experiment with this new form, labeled Magischer Realismus (Magic Realism). 

 

The term was later adopted during the 1940s by Latin authors who combined the theories of Roh to 

French Surrealist concepts of the marvelous and incorporated indigenous mythologies within 

traditional mimetic conventions in their quest for the original Latin American novel. The international 

success of such magical realist writers as Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel Garci. Marquez has only 

confirmed the association of the genre primarily with literature from the continent.   

 

Marquez’s fame in the use of Magical realism is unprecedented. His Magical realism was borne out of 

the troubled Latin American history and during the years of civil strife in Columbia. His sustained 

interest in the novel brought about its translation into thirty seven languages and sold thirty million 

copies of Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). Other writers of magic realism include Salman Rushdie 

an Indian Briton who wrote Satanic Verses, Midnight’s Children (1982 ) and Isabelle Allende’s The 



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30                Ogbazi & Osita 

House of Spirits (1982). In short, magic realism is a global phenomenon found in countries such as 

Brazil, Columbia, India, Haiti and Nigeria. From English Canada we have What the Crow Said by 

Robert Kroetch, The Invention of The World by Jack Hodgin and Green Grass, Running Water by 

Thomas King. In New Zealand, there is Janet Frame’s The Carpathians and From Austarlia, David 

Malouf’s Remembering Babylon.  Other magic realism writers include Gunter Grass from Germany, 

Italo Calvino from Italy and Jonh Fowler from England. 

 

From the 1960’s to the present, magic realism exists as a continuous presence in the twentieth century 

literature. Magic realism has become so important as a mode of expression worldwide, especially in 

postcolonial cultures, because it has provided the literal ground for significant cultural work; within 

its texts, marginal voices, and submerged traditions and emergent literatures have developed and 

created masterpieces. 

 

According to Wendy B. Faris “Magic realism combines realism and the fantastic so that the 

marvelous seem to grow organically within the ordinary, blurring the distinction between them”(1). 

Mathew Stretcher a Winona State University Assistant Professor of Japanese studies, and author, 

defines magic realism as “…what happens when a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by 

something too strange to believe” (3). For Christopher Warnes, “magic realism is a mode of narration 

that neutralizes or normalizes the supernatural; that is to say, a mode in which real and fantastic, 

natural and supernatural are coherently represented in a state of equivalent” (3). M.H. Abrams opines 

that “These writers weave in an ever shifting pattern, a sharply etched realism in representing ordinary 

events and details together with fantastic and dreamlike elements as well as materials derived from 

myths and fairy tales” (257). 

 

Magic realism is therefore characterized by the mingling and juxtaposition of the realistic and the 

fantastic, bizarre and skillful time shift, convoluted and even labyrinthine narratives and plots, 

miscellaneous use of dreams, myths and fairy stories, expressionistic and even surrealistic description, 

arcane erudition, the elements of surprise or abrupt shock, the horrific and the inexplicable. 

 

Unfortunately this term has become problematic and debased. Scholars new to the field are faced with 

a lot of Contradictory attitudes; critics feel that the term is shallow, dangerous and primitive. More 

positively Homi Bhabha calls it “the literary language of the emergent postcolonial world”. The worst 

is that a critic feels that the term ought to be done away with. The problem with such a suggestion 

even if it were possible to implement is that this critic forgets that the tenacity of this term is due to its 

explanatory value. This helps researchers to highlight the characteristics of this term and with the 

analysis of the texts below, the usefulness of magic realism is well appreciated.  

 

Five primary characteristics of the mode have been identified, the first is an irreducible element of 

magic; second, the descriptions in magical realism details a strong presence of the phenomenal world; 

the reader may experience some unsettling doubts in the effort to reconcile the two contradictory 

understanding of events;  third, the narrative merges different realms; fourth, magic realism disturbs 

received ideas about time, space and identity and finally, authorial reticence is a major characteristic 

of magical realism. 

  

According to Wendy Faris The “irreducible element” is something we cannot explain according to the 

laws of the universe as they have formulated in western empirically based discourse, that is, according 

to “logic, familiar knowledge, or received beliefs”. Therefore, the reader has difficulty marshalling 

evidence to settle questions of events and characters in such fictions. These irreducible elements are 

well assimilated into the realistic textual environment, rarely causing any comment by narrators or 

characters, who model acceptance of their readers. 

 

A second characteristic of magic realism is that its description details a strong presence of the 

“phenomenal world”. This is the realism in magic realism, differentiating it from fantasy and allegory. 

It appears in several ways. Realistic descriptions create a fictional world that resembles the one we 

live in often by extensive use of detail. On one hand, this attention to sensory details continues and 



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31                Ogbazi & Osita 

renews the realistic tradition. On the other hand, in addition to including magical events or 

phenomena, magical realism fiction includes intriguing magical details. Because these magical details 

represent a clear departure from realism, detail is freed from a traditional mimetic role to a greater 

extent than it has been before. 

 

By “unsettling doubts” the researcher means that before categorizing the irreducible element as 

irreducible, the reader may hesitate between two contradicting understanding of events, and hence 

experience some unsettling doubts. The question of belief is very vital here, this hesitation frequently 

stemming from the implicit clash of cultural systems within the narrative, which moves toward belief 

in extrasensory phenomena but narrates from the post enlightenment perspective and in the realistic 

mode that traditionally exclude them. And because belief system differs, clearly, some readers in 

some cultures will hesitate less than others, depending on their beliefs and narrative traditions. In 

other words, magical realism expands fictional reality to include events we used to call magic in 

realism. 

 

In magic realism we experience the “closeness or near-merging of two realisms”. It involves a 

confrontation between real world norms and other – worldly, supernatural norms. In terms of cultural 

history, magic realism often merges ancient or traditional—ometimes indigenous and modern worlds. 

It merges the world of ordinary people and that of witches, the land of the living and the land of the 

dead. In addition to merging different worlds, these fictions disturb received ideas about time and 

space. Magic realism not only disrupts time and space but our sense of identity as well. 

 

“Authorial reticence” refers to author’s lack of explanation for magical events that occur in magical 

realist’s texts. The author gives no explanation or surprise over these events. This deliberate 

withholding of explanation for magical events is typical in magic realist texts. This reticence serves 

the purpose mainly of preventing the reader from questioning the narrated events as no attention is 

drawn to the strangeness of the world view of reality. 

 

It is pertinent to recognize that post modernism and post colonialism find areas of concern where they 

overlap such as in the “formal thematic and strategic” areas and that magical realism is one of such 

area where post colonialism and post modernism find point of conjunction. For Chute: 

Comics, then, in the realm of the literary place the reader within the space of narrative, 

amplifying post modernism’s concern with location boundaries, depth and mapping. It returns 

us in the arena of literature, to a site of cultural production invested in textuality and print that 

is yet premised on the spatial in its construction and in the act of meaning making on the part 

of the looker and viewer. (359) 

 

Chute observes that in recent times the term post modernism has lost its popularity but it has mutated 

into different forms, reappearing in terms such as time and space, cognitive mapping. Although post 

modernism has outgrown its name it has not outgrown its efficacy. Korbut Salmans brings this to 

light: 

Postmodernism is a transitional period in the human search for meaning, astonishing the mind 

with its sober vision of the inconceivable truth, the notion of which gets completely 

substituted with limitless, chaotic and free floating signification. This brings one to the verge 

of Schizophrenic madness, with no means to enter the compulsory constructedness of 

existence, in which we have to be embedded so as to be called human. It is for this reason that 

instead of fruitless attempts to represent the world-as-it-is, one seeks to represent the world as 

it is not, willfully filling it with the meaning and addictively constructing its new revised 

maximum. (188) 

 

The construction of alternative realities in magic realist narratives does conform to post modernism 

ideology. Wendy B. Faris considers magic realism “an important component of postmodernism” 

(163). Magical realists are replenished postmodern narrators, born out of the death charged 

atmosphere of high modernist fiction. They somehow have passed beyond it. Magical realism has 

contributed significantly to postmodernism as it is ontological, concerned with questions of being. 



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Magic realist fiction, has moved from exhausted to replenished fiction. This is because of the fact that 

it re-invents. For Zamora “magical realism has an important presence in contemporary world 

literature because they treat texts from many countries and cultures, they create a complex 

comparative connections, avoiding separation while at the same time respecting cultural diversity” 

(4). The universal presence of magical realism makes the concept all the more significant and a 

detailed study of magic realism become imperative to the understanding of postmodern literature. 

 

Magical realist draw upon cultural system that are less real than those upon which traditional realism 

draws, often non-western cultural systems that privilege mystery over empiricism, empathy over 

technology, and tradition over innovation. Their primary narrative maybe in myths, legends, and 

rituals - in collective practices that bind communities together. In such cases magical realist works 

remind the readers that the novel began as a popular form with communal imperative. These cultural 

and communal imperatives are revitalized in magic realist fiction. Mehri and Leyri puts it thus 

“postcolonial literature deals with the cultural identity of the subaltern in colonial rule, these struggles 

of identity, history and future possibilities are present in magic realist work”…(118). Thus the mode 

becomes particularly useful to writers in postcolonial countries. Hallucinating scenes and events, 

fantastic/phantasmagoric characters are used to indict recent political and cultural pervasions. 

 

Magic realism therefore helps in the development of our multicultural sensibilities this is because 

magic realism is a narrative mode that reflects hybrid postcolonial countries. It exposes the reader to 

different cultures, both indigenous and western. Also for one to understand magic realism he or she 

has to be conversant with the devices of postmodernism because magic realist writers are 

postcolonialists who avail themselves with the devices of postmodernism.  

 

Helen Oyeyemi’s works are usually characterized by ambivalence. She usually combines the world of 

fantasy and the real creating two distinct narratives. Oyeyemi’s experimentation in her fictions and 

her style unambiguously sets her in the magic realist genre and without doubt in the field of 

postmodernism. Oyeyemi’s magical realist writings have its leaves and branches in postmodernism. 

For her, there is always this urge to align her writings to the genre of magic realism. Obviously her 

imitation of this non-European writers like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ben Okri and Salman Rushdie’s 

draws ambivalence towards her own Britishness. She moves beyond the British writing, this is 

traceable her appropriation and reinvention of magic realism. African myth, ancient cultural beliefs 

traditions, European folklore and fairy tale intersect in her writings. This intersection creates a global 

literary identity and an innovative new fictional space for the 21st century. All her narrative strategies 

point to the fact that there is yearn to be positioned as an internationally recognized magic realist 

writer.  

 

The Icarus Girl by Oyeyemi Helen centers on the life of an eight year old daughter of a British father 

and a black Nigerian mother, Jessamy or Jessy. Jessy lives in England but she is troubled. Her trouble 

is a psychological one, and this usually affects her physical and emotional interactions. This girl finds 

her hybrid heritage problematic, because she is in between, she cannot identify wholly to her fathers’ 

culture or her mothers’. She struggles for an identity. The height of the problem comes when she 

visits her grandparents in Nigeria. There she encounters Tilly Tilly, who may be her dead twin, the 

novel gets complicated when Tilly Tilly returns to England with Jessy and fights her for the 

possession of her body.  

 

Oyeyemi’s The Icarus Girl shows the determination of a writer to see that her work is categorized as 

magic realism. Oyeyemi in an obvious manner includes most of the defining characteristics of magic 

realism. In the text Ordinary Enchantments: Magical Realism and The Demystification of Narrative 

(2004), by Wendy Faris there are five characteristics of magic realism:  

An “irreducible element” of magic, second, the descriptions in magic realism detail a strong 

presence of the phenomenal world; third the reader may experience some unsettling doubts in 

the effort reconcile two conflicting understanding of events; fourth, the narrative merges 

different realisms; and finally, magical realism disturbs received ideas about time, space and 

identity (7) .  



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33                Ogbazi & Osita 

 

Oyeyemi’s The Icarus Girl is in line with Faris theory of magic realism. There is an “irreducible 

element” of magic and the magic is predominant and markedly self conscious. Magic events “really 

do happen”. Obviously there is no scientific backing for this magic but the reader has no alternative 

but to suspend all his disbelief. For example Tilly Tilly gains access into grandpa’s locked library, she 

reads and understands all the books on his shelves. Also on Jessamy’s second visit to Lagos she is 

able to speak the Yoruba language.  

 “Ko si nkan-nkan” (309)  

 

Oyeyemi merges the British setting with the imaginary world. This novel oscillates between 

recognizable world and the mystical world, she brings to light her encounter with Tilly Tilly who 

befriend’s her during her stay in Nigeria with her grandfather. It was only Jessy that could see Tilly 

Tilly. “And even when Jess was with Tilly Tilly…., the most noticeable thing was that they couldn’t 

see Tilly Tilly” (158). There Oyeyemi merges the world of the living and the dead and she distorts 

perceived ideas of time and identity. This is in line with Postmodernism.  

 

Also Oyeyemi brings to light the cultural complexity of the mixed race individual what Homi Bhabha 

calls “in-between” which is usually characterized by tension and problem. Jessamy on the other hand 

is culturally and racially hybrid, she has an English father and a Nigerian mother. Her in-betweenness 

in seen when she arrived Nigeria. She is called “Oyibo” at the airport. This means that she is a 

stranger, during their drive from the airport her mother is able to communicate with the cab driver in 

Yoruba while Jess cannot understand them. She only does so when the language is switched to 

English. Obviously being called a stranger in ones place means that there is a recognition of 

something strange that conflicts within Jessy. That is why she is seen very anxious and emotional in 

the beginning of the novel. Tilly Tilly’s appearance is worth mentioning. First, Tilly Tilly appears to 

be Jess’s very good friend and later she becomes a threat to her very existence and even haunts her. 

This makes Jessamy estranged and she even suffers crisis of identity.  

 

Tilly Tilly just like Jess’s grandfather gives her friend a new name Jessy. On the other hand her 

grandfather calls her Wuraola. This echoes Jessamy’s hybrid identity. Whether Jess / Jessamy or 

Wuraola, these names echo her hybrid position in the two worlds. “Wuraola” reflects her Nigerian 

identity, then Jess reflects her British identity while “Jessy” reflects her hybrid identity.  

 

Also Tilly Tilly has two names too, Titiola is her Nigerian name, and Tilly Tilly a name given to her 

by her friend because she may not be able to pronounce her Yoruba name correctly.  In the novel, 

cultural hybridity is evident in the use of the myth surrounding twins. In Africa, precisely in Yoruba 

land twins hold an ambiguous status. They are regarded as unique. They are able to transgress, 

between the spirit, real life and bush. Also when a newborn twin dies the other one is affected because 

the other one is a part of the other. There are assumptions that the living one might join the dead one, 

to avert this, a wooden figure called “Ibeji” is carved as a substitute for the dead twin. This figure 

possesses the dead twin’s soul and maintains a connection between the dead and living for the living 

twin. In the novel, Jess turns out to be a twin. Her twin sister Ferm had died at birth and Tilly Tilly 

herself is a dead twin. This is what Tilly Tilly capitalizes on.  

 

“You have been so empty, Jessy, without your twin; you have had no one to walk your three worlds 

with you. I know – I am the same. I have been just like you for a long time! But now I am Fern, I am 

your sister and you are my twin….” (176). Also the relationship between Jess and her mother call’s 

ones attention to the cultural hybridity in the novel. Hybridity create a sense of loss and even pain; 

nowonder, Jess’s mother wants her to be Nigerian:  

“[Jess] just didn’t know; if she could decide which one to be [English or Nigerian], maybe she 

would be able to get rid of Tilly Tilly, who was angry with her for worrying about it. Ashes 

and witnesses, home lands chopped into little pieces – she’d be English. No – she couldn’t 

though. She’d be Nigerian. No-” (268). 

 



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Obviously, Jess is not a Nigerian neither is she English. There is difficulty in marshalling out what she 

is and this leads to cultural dislocation and loss of identity. It is worth mentioning that Oyeyemi 

explore the limits and possibilities of language. During the first meeting between Tilly Tilly and 

Jessamy; Tilly Tilly appears to have a heavy Nigerian accent and is repetitious. As time goes on she 

begins to use the language well, she even uses idioms.  

 

It is important to know that the beginning of the novel is symbolic. There we are introduced to the 

eight year old loner Jessamy, who has psychological problem. She is emotionally down and her fever 

attack too are a source of anger, anxiety caused by her duality. She keeps reminding herself who she 

is “My name is Jessamy, I am eight years old” (3).  

She perceives herself as being different:  

“There’s something about ….. [them] that’s too different from me. It makes me weird and always 

thinking weird things and being scared and I don’t want to have something missing from me” (127).  

 

She may be right because, she is in-between two cultures and the question becomes who is she?  That 

is the problem of identification. Her mother wants her to be something she cannot comprehend. Hear 

her mother:  

“It is not a matter of my wanting you to be Nigerian you are … you are English too, duh. And it’s ok” 

(268).  

 

This answer is not ok to Jessamy because she wants to be one thing, either British or Nigerian and the 

consequences is detrimental. She either removes or includes something from her identity and this is 

impossible. Jess identity becomes questioned in her meeting with her grandfather Gbenga and this is 

the first time Jessy hears her Yoruba name.  

 

“Who?....Wuraola sounded like another person … not her at all. Should she answer to this name and 

by so doing steal the identity of someone who belonged here? Should she …. Become Wuraola? ” 

(21)  

 

These two names suggest her imposed binarism. Not belonging here nor there fully. But with time she 

becomes aware that this is her heritage and for real she is Wuraola. Hear Gbenga even emphasizing 

that a name can reveal some characteristics about its bearer. “Oyegbebi” grandfather Gbenga says, 

means kingship lives here, he tapped his breastbone. Here is where kingship lives. I am a princely 

man, and my children therefore should be proud and strong. Everyone who hears my name and knows 

my people should know that” (30).  

 

This means that these names are symbols of cultural heritage and even self identity. And this is where 

we fault Sarah’s inability to lead her daughter through because she too is also caught between two 

conflicting cultures. An examination of her background will reveal the reason for this ambivalence.  

 

Sarah, Jessamy’s mother was born and brought up by affluent Nigerian parents. Internally, there is a 

struggle for Sarah to reconcile herself with her intentional migration to Britain. Fifteen years back, she 

was sent to study medicine but she disappoints her father by studying English. This is reminiscent of 

Achebe’s protagonist who is faced with the same problem in No Longer at Ease. He was sent to study 

law but studies English. When he comes back, his town’s men who sent him abroad were 

disappointed. That is why we hear grandfather Gbenga telling Jessamy that her mother does not know 

what she wants, hear him.  

 

“What job do you find in Nigerian that requires that knowledge of all these useless words?... words 

describing white peoples, white things, every single story spun out in some place where we don’t 

exist” (29).  

 

Gbenga’s judgment reminds one of the fact that Sarah left her African heritage for the white man’s 

culture thereby abandoning her race and identity. Beside, her marriage to the white English man who 

is unaware of her culture is an evidence. Severally she demonstrates ambivalence towards her 



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35                Ogbazi & Osita 

ethnicity in the novel.  Jessamy becomes the endpoint of all this; the strict upbringing which she did 

not take is melted on Jessamy.  

 

“Jessamy became afraid of her mother’s almighty cuff of the back of her head” (206).  

She also threatens and states that: “Nigerian parents…. Could kill a child over disrespect” (120).  

 

She refuses to teach her child Yoruba language but is seen correcting Jessamy’s English. She 

intentionally creates a chasm between her child and her Yoruba heritage. Contradictorily she does not 

tell Jessamy any Western Fairy tale but only tells her Yoruba folktales.  

 

This brings light to the fact that she embraced an alien culture she knows nothing about and abandons 

her solid Yoruba heritage. Sarah comes up with reasons for her daughter’s weird and reclusive 

behavior: “In Nigeria …. Children were always getting themselves into mischief, and surely that was 

better than sitting inside reading and staring into the space” (6).  

 

From the above discussion it becomes obvious that the problem of identity formation can be traced to 

Sarah. In the tradition of West Africa and Western, Oyeyemi finds a source. She was able to draw on 

both western and indigenous myths. Again the presence of twins in the novel cannot be left out. She is 

engaged with the indigenous oral story telling of West Africa that portrays the cultural belief in the 

co-existence of the real and the spirit world and in the mythical concept of the Abiku or spirit child. 

Oyeyemi repeatedly connects the magical and the present with the past by invoking the indigenous 

West African anxiety surrounding the mystery or apparent unnaturalness of twins or Ibeji and the 

belief that twins possess supernatural powers.  Tilly Tilly’s identity throughout the novel is uncertain. 

This leads us again to the first meeting between Tilly Tilly and Jessmay, Jessamy observes the 

following:  “Something about her was out of proportion was she too tall and yet too … small at the 

same time? Was her neck too long? Her fingers? (46).  

 

This is not normal, the narrator even adds the fact that she looks like someone who has crawled out of 

a tomb:  “Her toes and feet were whitened with gravel scratches and sand, and … chest…The skin of 

her knees and elbows was ashen and grayish in patches” (47). Tilly Tilly begins to mimick her 

friend’s voice.  

 

In England, Tilly Tilly becomes more spiritual. The event here disorients our sense of time, space and 

identity. The two enter houses unseen and even unravel so many secrets. She offers to be Jessmay’s 

lost twin as mentioned and even offers her protection. Unfortunately as time progresses Jessamy 

becomes afraid of her friend. At one point Tilly Tilly takes control of Jessamy’s body. This did not go 

down well with Jessamy, it frightened her and she warns her friend not to do it again.  

 

Jessamy discovers that no one else could see Tilly Tilly except her. Though her new friend Siobhan 

senses Tilly Tilly on one occasion. Siobhan realizes that this thing is not a normal girl ie a human 

being. She realizes that she was going to harm Jessamy. At this point on Tilly Tilly becomes 

something very wicked, a harbinger of death, anxiety and sorrow. She destroys Sarah’s only computer 

and bathroom mirror. She even scares the hell out of the reader in the scene where Jessamy wakes up 

and perceived Tilly Tilly’s skin. Her skin smelt like wet rotten vegetable, only then she finds her 

hanging upside down from the ceiling:  

Face dangling a few centimeters a way from hers; those pupils, dilated until there was no 

white; those enormous, swollen lips, almost cartoonish except that they were deepest black, 

encrusted with dead dry skin, coated here and there with chunks of (I don’t know, I don’t 

know, please don’t let me know, even guess) something moist and pinky-white….  

The lips, which had paused, continued to move. Transfixed she caught a glimpse as they 

moved over a small, manure stump, the remains of a tongue….. jess began to scream, long 

and loud, as the silent, never-ending torrent of reddish black crupted from that awful mouth 

and engulfed her, baptizing her in its madness. The worst thing is really happening (206 – 

206).  

 



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This scene resembles a scene from a horror movie, before this scene Tilly Tilly’s words are 

ambiguous and confusing. Hear her when she tells Jessamy she cannot belong because she perceives 

that Jessamy wants to belong. One becomes confused as this point what immediately comes to ones 

mind is the fact that the black man cannot be accepted no matter how he tries he cannot be white.  

“There is no need to belong she say anyway there is no home and …..”  

 

She dives back to the past, obviously because she shares the African heritage with Tilly Tilly but this 

past is recollected in fragments. “our blood”. She say has been split like water for drinking, for 

washing and she Tilly Tilly, is a witness of the cruelty of the past (260). Obviously she must have 

added to Jessamy’s confusion too.  

 

Oyeyemi brings to light the dangers of not honoring old traditions. In the novel Sarah fails to perform 

the rituals for her daughter Jessamy because she has turned her back to the traditions of her people.  

“Jess lives in three worlds….she’s abiku…The spirits tell her things! Fern tells her things …we 

should’ve. We should’ve d – d-done Ibeji carving for her” (181).  The above show that Sarah regrets 

not going back to her roots and she admits this to Daniel. She equally admits being scared of her 

daughter hear her:  “I can’t mother this girl. I try, but ……I’m scared of her…..she is not like me at 

all. I don’t think she is like you either. I can’t even tell who this girl is” (201 – 211). 

 

She is the hybrid. The third space, the result of intermingling of two distinct cultures. To crown it all 

Jessamy dreams of the same woman she saw Tilly Tilly drawing. The woman is said to be long armed 

and looks like an Ere Ibeji figure. It becomes obvious to Jessamy that Tilly Tilly and the woman are 

same “like two sides of a coin” (171).  

 

At the end of the novel Jessamy’s new friend Siobhan is pushed down from a staircase by the evil 

Tilly Tilly. She is surely hurt and all fingers point at Jessamy. To understand this incident one has to 

suspend all rational reasoning. Also Jessamy drifts into coma after a tragic accident and she finds 

herself in a “bush” trying to get back to the real world. She wanders through this bush trying to come 

in contact with her friend Tilly Tilly who is now “the Sun” as she rushes straight to her dear friend, 

she wakes up:  “Hopped, skipped, jumped into Tilly’s unyielding flesh Jessamy Harrison woke up and 

up and up” (334).  

 

The title, The Icarus Girl is connected to a myth in ancient Greek called Icarus. This myth is about the 

son of Daedalus who to escape imprisonment\ flies by means of artificial wings but melts and falls 

into the sea and drowns when the wax on his wings melts as he flies too near the sun. His tragic flaw 

was hubris, because Icarus was of firm belief that he can control his destiny and because of his youth 

and inexperience he overestimates his powers. Obviously his youthful exuberance leads to his 

downfall. So the following excerpts above can be interpreted in line with this Greek mythology of 

Icarus Jessamy having lost control of her body and mind ends up tragically. The tragedy is that she 

looses her identity. Her internal conflict cannot be solved. This myth is strengthened by the Yoruba 

poem at the end of the novel Praise of the Leopard. In this poem the Leopard flings himself into 

dangerous situations, just like the African man who thinks he can handle two cultures.  

 

This bush is not new to Jessamy she is familiar with it perhaps, through stories. This bush implies that 

her identity has come to question. She is told of her imminent death.  

 

“You are going to die” (331). In the bush she is carried around by a silent girl. Suddenly her name is 

called three times “Wuraola” (332) symbolizing not only the three times her grandfather called her 

(Oyeyemi 313). The silent Girl brings her close and they gaze at each other’s eyes. First Jessamy 

believes she is looking at herself but then she understands that “It’s her” (333). Jessamy tells her that 

she can share her name after this the girl disappears into the sky. “Taken away into the sky in a stream 

of light” (177). This was Jessamy’s twin sister who was not given a Yoruba name due to the fact that 

she died at birth. This is symbolic; it means that Jessamy still has the opportunity to recover.  

 



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37                Ogbazi & Osita 

Oyeyemi’s narrator is unreliable and immature her perception of events is questionable. Oyeyemi use 

the third person omniscient narrative from the eye of an eight year old protagonist the events unfolds. 

Not only is she a child but she suffers from a sort of psychological problem. A character that is seen 

hiding in a cupboard and constantly tries to remind herself who she actually is. Oyeyemi’s narrative 

technique ruptures our perception of familiar myth and literary concepts. The novel offers an 

ambigious reading. Also in the novel Yoruba words and phrases are infused throughout, perhaps a 

way of bringing to light the cultural differences that exist in hybrid African countries. Also in the 

novel there are allusions to Greek myth and religious references, specifically Yoruba. She juxtaposes 

both mythical and Christian symbols for example when Jess’s aunt is preparing a meal, her uncle 

asks: “Are you sure you are not preparing for a modern day feeding of the five thousand? You are 

only cooking for twenty people, you know” (65).  

 

To understand the Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar by Syl Cheney Coker of Sierra Leone one has 

to be conversant with the middle passage and how it affected sierra-Leone. Perhaps an understanding 

of the Creoles of Sierra Leone will be useful. Sierra Leoneans are the syncretized result of cultural 

mingling between African, American, Caribbean and European cultures. These liberated slaves who 

had been exposed to Western culture brought these creoles. Obviously one of the characteristic 

hybridity is tension. This transition is never smooth hear Cheney – Coker himself: 

If you have read my poetry, and of course my novel, it is clear that. I am a sierra Leonean 

with roots in the history of the middle passage. Initially I think I was trying to come to terms 

with defining what that history has meant for me and how in some ways it makes me slightly 

different, or so people feel from other West African writers. It is clear that if you are dealing 

with other West African writers who write in English, their mindsets, the traditional norms 

and forms that make themselves known in their poetry now and then, image clusters so to 

speak which they have inherited, remained intact. But in my case its quite different because 

I’m having to contend with the admixture for an African life and the history of slavery what 

does two have meant for us sierra Leonian Creoles. (11 – 12)  

 

Obviously, this is a cultural crisis, and this crisis has to do with people who have lost their pride and 

heritage and the only resort will be to regain their self respect and dignity. Cheney Coker using Magic 

Realism travels through time and space, from the imaginary to the magical, from the living to the 

dead. He oscillates between the past and present. This brings to light the negative effects of slavery 

and the wickedness of the colonizers. He even brings to light the corruption and the dictatorship that 

plague the present day postcolonial Africa.  

 

The story is very complicated it traces generations, the families of Cromantines and the martin who 

were the founders of the malaguelta. And later Thomas Bookerman the leader of the new wave 

immigrant, Phyllis Dundas and the farmer brothers. These people who were originally slaves only to 

return to Africa to face the worst kind of humiliation.  

 

Their fight for justness and freedom reverberates throughout the novel. These families have blood link 

with the magical Suleiman, who is also known as Alusine Dunbar. He has a daughter called Fatmatta 

who he conceived through magical powers. His daughter is also known as Bird woman and she 

possesses supernatural powers too. She is encountered in a boat returning to Africa from America by 

the Cromantines. At her death she relieves the burden in her heart to Jeanette Cromatine. Jeanette was 

a proud and free young African American slave who is married to Sebastian a slave. They were all in 

the boat returning to Africa to find their roots.  

 

Coker brings to light the kind of tyranny and leadership in Africa, most of these people have 

bloodlines with these founders i.e. malaguelta and chromatins. He exposes the corruption during the 

military regime and also during the civilian regime, malaguelta grow and changes, these 

grandchildren of the chromatin sow the seed of anticolonialism. These Arabs and British decide to 

withdraw because of the pressure. Alibaba and “the forty ministers took over the reigns of malaguetta 

(381). These people are more corrupt than their predecessors. They are later overthrown by masimiara 



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38                Ogbazi & Osita 

the head of the Army. Sanka Maru the new civilian assumes leadership but tyranny and opposition 

continues. Magically the magical Suleiman files in a carpet to get him:  

President Sanka Mani walked to a window, pushed the curtains aside and saw a magic carpet 

flying in the air, not knowing that it had come a long way and that its arrival had been 

predicted by an albino afraid of light, mesmerized by the occurrence maru thought he was 

seeing things when an old man lowered himself from the carpet, waved him, and disappeared 

under a tree. (395)  

 

The above is laughable, the meaning is also ambiguous, first coker exceeds the limits of reality 

distorting our sense of space. This could mean that it will only take a supernatural intervention to stop 

the corruption that exists in the African society. Syl Cheney Coker is a postcolonial writer on the 

margin he shares common characteristics with the magical realist cosmopolitans of the Latin 

American variety; he also has preoccupations in common with the cultural nationalism of some of the 

African decolonizers. His precise location and its political and narrative implications are revealed in 

the major themes of the novel, and its narrative points of view.  

 

These slaves are rootles and they are haunted by their rootlessness for example Sebastian 

Cromantines, dreams about his father telling him that he is restless and that his only peaceful place 

will be in Africa, where his origin lies hear Sebastian’s father:  

“A rootless man burdened by his inability to find a resting place” (9).  

 

After this dream Sebastian decides to embark on a dangerous mission to return to Africa to find his 

father’s origin and perhaps bury his bones there. Fatmatta the Bird woman is burdened with this same 

vision. She is being drawn to Africa by a vision. This Africa is where her umbilical cord is buried. 

Thus:  

She saw a long ancestral bridge with a lot of people crossing from one end to the other, and 

suddenly everything was clear to her, cut off from that coalescence of man and spirits, 

burdened by servitude, she had merely been fulfilling a destiny circumscribed by fate, by an 

old animated life rhythm that went round the universe like a great flame and then she knew 

that she would not die in the land of leeches but that she would return shed all signs of 

degradation and abuse. Because by the persistence of its looks by the grave and reverential 

distances it put between itself and other turkey, the great bird had come to take her home to 

that land where her navel string was buried (67).  

 

In Africa the umbilical cord which usually connects the mother while in the womb to her unborn 

child. This umbilical is buried after the birth of the child this symbolizes the baby’s link to earth. A 

times where this is buried a beautiful tree is planted and this tree grows with the child. Thus the above 

creates an image of return to the source. Unfortunately Fatmatta does not return home. She dies on the 

boat to be buried along with her umbilical cord in Africa. This means that the journey of freedom is 

not going to be an easy one. But when they return to their homeland, they become aliens who are 

ignorant of the customs. Sebastian on returning home asks the king for land.  

“Which they were prepared to farm and pay him back from the harvest” (69).  

Obviously, this may be the practice where he comes from but the king quickly warns him that “Here, 

no one owns anything, not even the stones” (69).  

The king quickly reminds them that they are strangers: 

“Keep off our women” (70).  

 

This is very painful. The people ascribe all negativity to these returnees. Coker explores the 

superstitious belief in Africa using the malaria incident.  

“But when their children succumbed to death soon after eating the sweet potatoes which the foreign 

woman had planted, they deduced with an age old logic, contrary to reason, that the seed of settlers 

misfortune had been planted in their world, which not even the totemic powers of the gods could halt” 

(101). 

 

 



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39                Ogbazi & Osita 

Again corruption is one Cheney-Coker’s thematic concern in this work hear him:  

We have just changed the government in Sierra Leon where there have been some of most 

corrupt politicians imaginable (there, of course, corrupt politicians every where from New 

York to Istanbul). These are the chaps I went to school with, who had the finest education, 

who went to Oxford and took Ph.Ds. They have no business being corrupt. I have come to the 

decision that the last people you want to put in government in Sierra Leone are people who 

are educated. They make the worst criminals. (16)  

 

As generation pass, and the search for freedom has become a thing of the past, the next problem 

becomes the leaders. These ruling classes are even more violent and brutal than the old slavers. They 

too resort to the same barbarity they accuse of the colonical masters of. It is an Irony that masimiara 

was thrown into the same dungeon where they had put past slaves during the slave trade:  

“Where in centuries past, the blood of his countrymen and women had mixed with their own excreta 

and vomit, before they were transported across the treacherous sea to die in the swampy bleakness of 

another world” (vii).  

 

These leaders have become more corrupt than their predecessors. The bribery, corruption and 

nepotism in these countries are unequaled. The worst is that these colonial masters still interfere in the 

affairs of the people.  

“Us company to dump under waste off African coast. It was his country, all right; there was no doubt 

about it. He read how for the sum of twenty five million dollars the president had agreed to have the 

toxic waste dumped in the waters of his country, and kill off all the children” (xi).  

 

As time went on the gap between the rich and poor kept growing. The rich keeps getting richer and 

the poor, gets poorer. This greed does not emanate from history but it is something that is innate. 

Thomas Bookerman is disappointed and cries out:  

“Men who only yesterday were shop keepers with bad teeth and could barely read, now ordered 

evening jackets in black venetians and hopsacks; women who only yesterday were content to wear 

hand-men-downs and keep clean houses had taken to buying gold and parading in silk and brocade at 

church services” (213).  

This is oligarchy at its peak Coker in this novel emphasis that literature is the only tool that can call 

these sycophants to order. He sees it as a weapon to fight this hydra headed problem, thus:  

“Poetry was a much more dangerous weapon than a whole army”. It cannot be denied that the writer 

is the conscience of his society. He is just like the biblical voice crying out with the sole aim of 

change. The novel like all magic realist novels is not an easy one. There are many story tellers who all 

want to tell the history of Malagueta. These include Alusine Dunbar, Thomas Bookerman and even 

Coker Cheney at who becomes a poet as manifested in character of Garbage. Cheney ironically 

distances himself from the magical happenings, as it is done in most magical realists’ texts. The work 

is also filled with ambiguities; the tone of the novel is poetic too. The authors’ voice may be seen as 

omniscient but at the same time it is filled uncertainties. The structure of the narrative is fragmented 

and dispersed. Again, its narrative voices is multiple and complex. 

 

Conclusion  

So far this paper has strived to argue that magic realism constitutes a point of convergence between 

post modernism and post colonialism. Magic realism becomes an important mode of expression 

worldwide, especially in post colonial cultures, because it has provided the literary background for 

significant cultural works. At the same time magic realism has also contributed to the growth of post 

modernism literary sensibility. Cheney Coker’s The Last Harmattan of Alusine Dunbar tells the story 

of the transatlantic slave trade and its horrors. He also presents the political situation in Sierra –Leone 

using magic realism.  Oyeyemi’s The Icarus Girl possesses all the defining characteristics of magical 

realism. She was able to incorporate Yoruba folklore into her novel. Her experimental style indicates 

that her work should be categorized as post modernism. The two works bear testimonies to the fact 

that magic realism is not shallow or a term to be done away with. Magic realism is a resourceful 

literary tool that a writer could use to create a unique work.              

  



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