Product Description

The seductive world of flamenco forms the backdrop for a classic tale of independence found, lost, and reclaimed. Like Bizet's legendary gypsy, Carmen "La Coja" (The Cripple) Santos is hilarious, passionate, triumphant, and mesmerizing. A renowned flamenco dancer in Chicago despite the legacy of childhood polio, Carmen has long enjoyed an affair with Agustín, the married director of her troupe--a romance that's now growing stale. When she begins a new, passionate liaison with Manolo, Agustín's grandson and a dancer of natural genius, an angry rivalry is sparked. Carmen finally makes her way back to happiness in this funny, fiery story that's equal parts soap opera, tragicomedy, and rhapsody.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #515120 in Books
• Published on: 2000-09-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Amazon.com Review
Ana Castillo's voice is one of self-confident, hypnotic melancholy. Peel My Love Like an Onion, her fifth book, often reads like a diary rather than a novel--full of dashed-off midnight eloquence but unformed. It's the story of Carmen Santos, a flamenco dancer whose right leg is shriveled from polio. Her family moved from Mexico to Chicago before she was born: "My first language was Spanish but I am not really Mexican. I guess I am Chicago-Mexican." Castillo sees the immigrant experience as a minefield of ironies. Carmen works at the Domino's in the airport as a way of being a productive American, thus gaining her father's respect. One morning on a "power walk" she realizes that the shoes she is wearing may have been made in a sweatshop by some distant relative from "somewhere... very foreign, like seaweed-and-black-fungus-in-French-Vietnamese-soup foreign."

As the book moves back and forth between Carmen's dreams of economic and emotional freedom and her erotic life (in which passion often feels as much like a trap as a release), Castillo's fluid style often lapses into carelessness. And there is a blurred quality to many of the images, like photographs taken from a moving car. Carmen's story is most engaging when she experiences isolated moments of independence: flamenco dancing, for instance, for the customers at a hair salon where she is working, dragging her bad leg around in front of the ladies under the hair dryers. The scene--a moment to relish--is almost heroic in its defiance of the exhausted world. --Emily White

From Publishers Weekly
Confirming her reputation as a talented writer, Castillo's (So Far from God) sardonic and seductive novel flowers at the exotic intersection of Chicago's flamenco, Gypsy and Chicano communities, where Carmen Santos, a defiant ex-flamenco dancer, struggles with the end of her career and the dissolution of a passionate love triangle. Left with a crippled leg after a childhood bout of polio, Carmen has always been defined by those around herAher parents, the school for the disabled she attended, her lovers and her public, who know her as "La Coja" (the cripple). It is only when she is dancing that she is sure of her identity, and as polio belatedly reasserts itself in her 40-year-old body, she feels she is losing the core of her existence. Then, like her legs, her two Gypsy loversAAgust!n, the married leader of her troupe, and Manolo, a fiery young dancer and Agust!n's godsonAabandon her. After 17 years as a dancer and a sensual being, Carmen is reduced to working in a sweatshop, at an airport pizza joint and as a corn-on-the-cob peddler. Most difficult of all, she is forced to move back into the family home, where her crotchety mother erodes her spirit. Dependent, stubborn, naive and heartbreakingly vulnerable, Carmen is a realistically flawed and lively survivor. In the person of her indomitable protagonist, Castillo's trademark feminist and border-crossing concerns acquire a new depth and complexity. Her writing has matured, and she keeps her own voice unobtrusive, stitching a seamless narrative. The pace here does not match the breakneck velocity of her previous works, nor does the novel strain for elaborate effects or call upon magic realism, yet its verve is unflinching. As careful an achievement as the patient peeling of an onion, this compulsively readable narrative should delight, and expand, Castillo's audience. Agent, Susan Bergholz. Author tour. (Sept.) FYI: Castillo's first and second novels, The Mixquiahuala Letters and Sapogonia, will be reissued in trade paperback by Anchor.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Carmen "La Coja" ("The Cripple") is a flamenco dancer despite her bad leg (she had polio as a child). This is not, however, a sentimental story about her triumph over tragedy, though in an inspired early passage we do see her struggle to learn to dance. The tale spun by Castillo (So Far from God) instead focuses on an older Carmen, past her prime and piecing herself together after a tangle of romances has unraveled. Peel her love like an onion, and you get layer after layer of confusion and betrayal: just as her long affair with August!n, the double-dealing manager of her troupe, begins to stall, she falls passionately in love with August!n's "godson," the talented and charismatic Manolo. Yes, Manolo loves her ("I will never be alone as long as I love you'), but that doesn't stop him from heading off to Spain with August!n. Carmen feels pretty wind-whipped by his desertion but keeps standingAthroughout, this tough little dancer never really hits the groundAand in the end she finds her voice, literally: she can't dance any more (except for herself), but she has a new recording contract. Lyrical and sharply told, though this tale has been heard before: of course Carmen will triumph, and what makes Manolo so special, anyway? For most fiction collections.ABarbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Carmen de las Alas
Carmen la Coja soars through her life like a bird with giant wings, refusing to relent in the face of incredible obstacles, and still manages to be brilliant and sexy and desired. In the Flamenco world, Carmen is a symbol of grace and beauty, of amazing passes and fluid movements, and as a part of this world, even though she is not "gitana" she delves into that world as if she is a native. A polio-crippled Mexican-American from Chicago, Carmen faces life with spunk and a fearless sense of fate that carries her through passionate love affairs with two dazzling Gypsy dancers whose own bond of filial honor results in her desertion and eventual reclamation, albeit after is is too late. That Carmen triumphs at last in the Flamenco world is a tribute to her luck as well as to her devotion and faithfulness to her old friends and family. That she struggles on despite physical debilities that would stymy many others brings her the success that she has long deserved, as well as the fulfillment of her dreams and longings for security and love. This is an exciting novel, full of love and lust, magic and mystique. A must read!!

Flamenco Beats
Strong and smooth like the beats of flamenco Castillo wrote this novel to defy patriarchy. Carmen--Castillo's main character--refuses being possessed by any of her lovers. How? Read the novel. It is an impressive novel indeed.

Castillo's talent
Castillo's talent is once more intensified in Peel my Love Like an Onion. Her witty interweaves her romantic language to portray the struggle of Carmen La Coja. Castillo wants finally to prove that Carmen, despite her disability is the most powerful character in the novel. This entails her reflections on different issues: romance, national identity, gender identity. Castillo weaves all these threads successfully. Don't miss reading the novel.