A young woman from Minnesota searches out the Colombian father she's never known in this powerful exploration of what family really means

He loved Colombia too much to leave it. The explanation from her Minnesotan mother was enough to satisfy a child's curiosity about her missing father. But at twenty-one, Anika Fajardo wanted more. She wanted to know her father better and to know what kind of country could have such a hold on him. And so, in 1995, Fajardo boarded a plane and flew to Colombia to discover a birthplace that was foreign to her and a father who was a stranger. There she learns that sometimes, no matter how many pieces you find, fitting together a family history isn't easy.

With her tentative entry into her father's world, Fajardo steps on a path that will take her in surprising directions, toward unsuspected secrets about her family and herself. Set against the changing backdrops of Colombia and the American Midwest, her journey carries her back to the 1970s and the beginnings of her parents' broken marriage, and forward to the present day, where the magic and reality of love and heartache-and her own experience as a parent-await her. The way is strewn with obstacles, physical and metaphysical-from the perils encountered on a mountain road in Colombia to the death of a loved one to the birth of her own child-but the toughest to negotiate are the shifting place of memory and truth while coming to understand her place in her family and in the world.

Vivid and heartfelt in the telling, Fajardo's story is powerfully compelling in its bridging of time and place and in its moving depiction of self-transformation. Family, she comes to find, is where you find it and what you make of it.

About the Author

Anika Fajardo was born in Colombia and raised in Minnesota. Her writing has been published in the anthologies Brief Encounters: A Collection of Contemporary Nonfiction and Sky Blue Water: Great Stories for Young Readers (Minnesota, 2016). She has earned awards from the Jerome Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and the Loft Literary Center. The manuscript for Magical Realism for Non-Believers was a finalist for the Bakeless Literary Prize in Creative Nonfiction. She lives in Minneapolis.

Reviews

"Incredibly well written and compelling, Anika Fajardo's Magical Realism for Non-Believers is a remarkable memoir about the search for a father, a culture, a self. I felt like I was reading about my own life and the price I paid for assimilation and acculturation. I simply couldn't put it down."-Pablo Medina, author of The Island Kingdom and Cubop City Blues

"Bicultural experience is a dispassionate term for life lived across borders, identities, and even family trees. As Anika Fajardo makes clear in this searching and lyrical memoir, there is nothing dispassionate about flying back to one's birthland, walking its soil again, or breaking bread with family who have become as good as strangers. Fajardo seeks to reconnect these missing and scattered pieces, and it is a privilege to journey beside her."-Lila Quintero Weaver, author of Darkroom: A Memoir in Black and White

"A rare read, you know the kind: you don't want it to end but you can't put it down. Bewitching and beautiful, bound to move anyone who was ever a parent or a child, and just as compelling (and magical) the second time around."-Dinah Lenney, author of The Object Parade

"A forthright and sensitive tale of a daughter's quest."-Kirkus Reviews

"Fajardo revisits interactions and places with intricately remembered emotion, making for a delicious dive into the complicated, beautiful messes that love can make."-Booklist

"Fajardo describes the pain of yearning for something you can't quite articulate, of getting what you thought you wanted and finding it less than satisfying. She dives into her family's past and continues her story into her own adulthood, laying bare the many complicated ways our family informs who we are and how we interact with the world."-BuzzFeed

"Anika Fajardo's beautifully written memoir is a full, satisfying read."-Star Tribune

"Anika Fajardo has written a wonderful, sensitive and compelling memoir about her journey to forge a relationship with the father she never knew. She uses her talents to spin a tale that could have been fiction but is all the more special because it is all true."-I Am Book Minded

"Magical Realism for Non-Believers is filled with honest and authentic truths about the complex relationship between children and their neglectful parents and the struggle to find one's place between two cultures."-School Library Journal

Book Information
ISBN 9781517906863
Author Anika Fajardo
Format Hardback
Page Count 192
Imprint University of Minnesota Press
Publisher University of Minnesota Press
Dimensions(mm) 210mm * 140mm * 25mm