Constructing Memory and Connection through the Supernatural: Emily X. R. Pan’s The Astonishing Color of After

Leigh Sanders, the Taiwanese American protagonist in Emily X. R. Pan’s The Astonishing Color of After (2018), grew up as a person with stolen memory because it has been a taboo in her multiracial family to talk about Taiwan and her mother Dorothy Chen Sanders’ immigration to America. This paper will explore how Pan utilizes magical realism to facilitate her protagonist’s quest to gain memory about her late mother’s life, give voice to her mother’s willful silenced immigration story, and eventually set her lopsided family tree right. Besides, the theory of place-making shall be applied to discuss how Leigh reconstructs her mother’s life story by place-making with/in Taiwan and finally connects with her late mother and maternal family. Through the lens of place-making, this study shall foreground Pan’s ingenuity in infusing magical realism with Taiwan’s local currents to characterize her protagonist’s quest to construct memory and connection. The coda will briefly discuss Pan’s innovation of the existing immigrant narrative tradition and her contribution to the magical realist narrative mode.