Beyond Magic Realism: the Stuff of Ordinary Lives? Lorene Cary s Rewriting of Beloved

Abstract

In the current context of the proliferation of neo-slave narratives, Lorene s Cary The Price of a Child (1995) strikes a rather singular tone. With its title explicitly echoing Toni Morrison s Beloved, Cary s novel and its straightforward realism come as a surprise. As this close intertextual reading of the two novels intends to show, beyond expressing a probable anxiety of influence, Cary s narrative appears to revise major tenets of the African American ethos on which Beloved rests.