Midnight at the Blackbird Café is a contemporary novel that embraces several genres, including magical realism and Southern Gothic, which influence the progression of the novel’s plot.

Magical realism is a form of literary fantasy that builds realistic settings and characters but then layers them with the fantastical. Key features of magical realism include magical elements that act in support of the setting woven into the realism. The genre’s earliest foundations come from the art world of Germany in 1925. The term magical realism was coined by art critic Franz Roh. It later appeared in the fairy tales and short stories of 19th-century Romantic writers. Some literary historians posit magical realism’s literary roots are based in Latin American writing. The surrealism of German artists influenced Latinx writers who traveled throughout Europe. The 1927 Spanish translation of Franz Roh’s book on magical realism predicated a burst of Latinx short stories and novels written in the magical realism genre. Magical realism hit its peak between 1940 and 1950 in Argentina with novels such as Alejo Carpentier’s The Kingdom of This World. This movement would go on to inspire one of the most iconic novels featuring magical realism, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s 1969 novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude.