Question

Read the excerpt from Cristina Garcia’s Dreaming in Cuban.

“Lourdes, I’m back,” Jorge del Pino greets his daughter forty days after she buried him with his Panama hat, his cigars, and a bouquet of violets in a cemetery on the border of Brooklyn and Queens.

His words are warm and close as a breath. Lourdes turns, expecting to find her father at her shoulder but she sees only the dusk settling on the tops of the oak trees, the pink tinge of sliding darkness.

“Don’t be afraid, mi hija. Just keep walking and I’ll explain,” Jorge del Pino tells his daughter.

The sunset flares behind a row of brownstones linking them as if by a flaming ribbon.

Which best identifies the magic realism found in the excerpt?
Lourdes’s father returning to her from the dead
the list of items Lourdes buried with her father
the dusk settling on the tops of the trees
the flaring sunset behind the brownstones

Answer 1

Lourdes’s father returning to her from the dead.

This is a supernatural event presented matter-of-factly (a hallmark of magic realism): a deceased character speaks and returns as if it’s ordinary, while the rest of the scene is realistic.