“If you’re going to be a writer you have to be one of the great ones, and they don’t make them anymore … After all, there are better ways to starve to death.”
— Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born on this day, March 6, 1927, in Aracataca, Colombia. Considered as one of the greatest authors of all time, he had an unlikely path to greatness. Though he wanted to be a musician, life was holding greatness for him in another genre of culture: writing.

His novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, was the first celebrated text that used magical realism even though several great writers had written in style before him. When one mentions Gabo in a circle of friends, one rarely finds mention of the many themes in his works from one’s peers. All they say is “Oh, he is perhaps the grandmaster of magical realism.” This is sad; it suggests that people don’t know why did Gabo or any other writer relied on magical realism to write their stories.

Magical realism in Latin America was often used by writers like Garcia Marquez to tell the stories of those on the fringes of society. Thus the style inherently became a critique of political power and influential people. Considering the recent turmoil in Latin America, one wonders if another writer will take up the project of telling the tales of the region the way Marquez told us through his novels.