Abstract
An arm stretches into midair; another reaches up to join it as notes from a guitar drift through the air. Palms clap, and the flamenco dance begins. In the 1999 novel Peel My Love like an Onion, Ana Castillo’s unforgettable protagonist, Carmen la Coja, remembers her transformation as a dancer: “I put my hands up the way Miss Dorotea had hers. I focused on the guitar music coming from the record player. I didn’t know anything about the music or about what she wanted to teach us. . . . I tried harder at that moment than at anything I