Z/Z: Isabel Allende and the Mark of Zorro

Abstract

The novels of Chilean author Isabel Allende are often criticized for sentimentality, social and political naivety, stylistic conservatism and, in general, for the perpetuation of bourgeois norms. However, Allende is precisely a popular, mainstream writer aiming her work at an international middle-brow audience. The effectiveness of her work must therefore be judged in terms of its relationship to a non-academic and non-intellectual global readership. From this perspective, Allende's mobilization of popular formats can be seen to generate a form of Magical Realism that communicates key values and ideas to a mass public in the way that academic theory or more complex examples of Latin American fiction could not hope to. Allende's fiction can be seen to develop a more centrist, popular equivalent of a postcolonial discourse without the frequently attendant pedantry and obfuscation. Her literary treatment of the iconic North-American hero Zorro in her novel of 2005, Zorro: Una Novela, may be seen as marking her immersion in the mass cultural market, but should also be read as a means of offering a commentary on the colonial and postcolonial Americas for a wider reading public. Through the exploration of dualities, Allende channels the ideals implicit in non-binary logic into a more material direction via a more directly communicative path.