"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 "There is death, danger, cultural shock, love, loss, secrets and a growing family. It is about desperately wanting to know your roots, to find the missing pieces of yourself and to finally meet a parent who is like a phantom limb. It is the odd coincidences of parallel lives, the strange experience of coming to love strangers who are your blood, the peculiar curiosity of what ifs, the wonderment that another you could have easily come to fruition had life taken different turns." -- Bookstalkerblog "A natural storyteller, Fajardo writes in a way that is emotional and compelling, her memory so sharp that images spring from the page." -- Mankato Free Press.