We Are Not from Here

A dichotomy between reality and illusion crops up frequently over the course of the book, especially with Pequeña’s character. She has frequent visions that she (and consequently readers) does not seem to be sure are dreams, prophecies, out-of-body experiences, or some combination of all three. Additionally, Pequeña often comments in her first-person narrative chapters when the surroundings or situations do not feel real to her. When Pulga hands her a bus ticket, for example, her first thought is, “Is this real?” (104). When Soledad makes them a beautiful feast at their departure, Pequeña questions reality again: “I begin to wonder […] if I’m dreaming. If any of this is real, as we eat food too good to be made by human hands, as we sleep a sleep so deep, it seems like a spell” (211). Conversely, when Chico dies, Pequeña wants all that she sees to be untrue, but cannot trick herself: “And I know all of this is real—achingly, terribly real” (232). Pequeña’s traumatic experiences manifest a break with reality, both when confronted by more violence and when encountering extreme kindness. In either case, Pequeña struggles to accept these occurrences as consistent with reality, indicating the extent of both her trauma and her will to find a way to survive.

Pequeña’s visions, along with her hope that La Bruja, her guardian angel-style witch, will accompany and help her on her journey, are details consistent with the literary element of magical realism. The term magical realism can be used to help describe a plot device; an event, passage, or part of a work; or an entire sub-genre if the book uses it consistently. It is often associated with Latin American writers, cultures, and settings. Magical realism involves a realistic setting in which a foundation or undercurrent of magic, illusion, or the supernatural exists—often in a way combined with indigenous myth or tradition—and is witnessed and/or utilized by a character or characters.

Other details in the novel that lean toward magical realism include when Doña Agostina tells Pulga of a dream she had after Don Felicio’s death. Later, Pequeña has a vision of spiders attacking the kidnappers in the tall grass after she mystically rises above the scene. Not only does Pequeña see hundreds of spiders attacking in pitch blackness, but the men also react in a way that suggests to the reader that the spiders are somehow real: They run away asking each other “if they feel that” (222). Early in the novel, Pequeña recalls how her mother went to a witch to learn about her husband’s potential infidelities, but what the woman saw in an egg yolk in water was Pequeña burning. The witch tells Pequeña to look: “I know you can see things too” (62), and indeed, Pequeña wonders if her “destiny was to die in fire” (62); later, in the desert, she feels as if she is burning to death, and when she is rescued by Marta, “the scent of burning lingers in the air” (328) as she realizes her rebirth as Flor has occurred. Pequeña also sees spirits of those who died on the trip.

As a narrative strategy, magical realism helps Sanchez to explore the effects of trauma on her characters’ experiences of reality, as even Pulga struggles to maintain a sense of what is real aboard La Bestia. Pequeña’s poetic visions often align with instances of extreme danger, indicating that her break with reality in some way helps her to cope with the physical and mental stress of these experiences.