Abstract:
Soviet Russia in the throes of a cultural revolution and the United States in the midst of
the civil rights movement: two epicenters of change on opposite sides of the world which had,
perhaps, little in common on the surface. These vastly different settings were the stage on which
authors Abram Tertz and Toni Morrison emerged – two revolutionary writers whose lives never
intersected. And yet, despite the different worlds where they resided, these authors shared much
in common; their reverence for the literary tradition which preceded them, their critical
understanding of language and writing, and most importantly, their desire to break free of the
chains tightened around them by their respective societies. Tertz and Morrison, both censored in
their own ways, both pressured into rigid and unyielding roles, freed themselves via their
writing; Tertz, through fantastical realism, or as he termed it “phantasmagoria,” and Morrison
through magical realism. To create these fantastical masterpieces, however, both authors had to
fracture their identity in two, existing under both the names bestowed upon at birth and the
names they created to escape from the binds of their societies. Thus, Abram Tertz and Toni
Morrison were not born but created. Only via the creation of their second selves could they
realize the fantastical and magical visions they imagined.
