Idza Luhumyo's "Five Years Next Sunday"

The short story "Five Years Next Sunday" by Idza Luhumyo explores ideas of magical realism that I have not yet encountered. Although we studied Marquez's "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings", also magical realism, I found my experience reading Luhumyo's writing much different. To begin, there is a lot of information about the characters and their actions that are not revealed to the reader. This caused some initial confusion for me, but ultimately forced me to pay closer attention to what each character did and try to read between the lines in hopes to find out their true motives. Additionally, I felt sad for the character of Pili. She had gone her whole life before the introduction of Seth being sort of disowned by her family for having a power that she has no control over getting. Seth's obsession with her hair caused her parents, especially her mom, to treat Pili like an actual member of the family for once. Once she realized this, Pili agrees to be worshiped like a god by a strange white man while her parents profit off of it because it is the closest she has ever been to feeling loved by them. However, in the end, she does all of this for nothing as she was scammed by Honey and Seth which results in a fate much worse than the life she was living at the beginning of the story.

I keep thinking of the character of Pili as naive or gullible. I struggle to understand why she believed Honey. This thinking makes me see the area in which Pili lives being in its own dome separate from the rest of the world. It is run by money hungry people who are willing to do whatever it takes to continue making a buck. This is seen in the fact that they will kill Pili if she cuts her hair because it means that people will no longer pay their outrageous prices for water. So maybe Pili is so used to being controlled and told what to do that she knew no better than to follow along to the empty promises of Honey.