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The Curse of the Gypsy: Ten Stories and a Novella, by Alicia Gaspar de Alba, offers readers two fascinating and complex literary projects: first, a collection of ten interconnected stories that shape what Alicia Gaspar de Alba describes as a deconstructed novel with the title “The Curse of the Gypsy.” Following this is the historical-mythical novella recovering “The True and Tragic Story of Liberata Wilgefortis, Who, Having Consecrated her Virginity to the Goddess Diana to Avoid Marriage, Grew a Beard and Was Crucified.” With these two texts, Gaspar de Alba’s (historical) fiction engages in a critique of patriarchal, heteronormative, and white supremacist ideologies across both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border and the Atlantic, as the stories take readers to early 20th century Spain, Mexico and the U.S., and to the Hispania Lusitania of the 2nd century A.D.
The stories in “The Curse of the Gyspy” weave different narrative voices that reveal the complexity of the characters Gaspar de Alba re/creates. “The Curse of the Gyspy” begins with the story of Margarita Vargas, a gypsy from Granada (Spain) who is victim of a lifelong curse her mother puts on her when she finds out Margarita is pregnant with the Grenadian poet Federico GarcÍa Lorca’s child. This curse has taken the shape of a petrified fetus Margarita carries for eighty years, even after Lorca’s execution at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War. As Margarita confesses her captivating romance with Lorca and their tragic fate, readers learn that her mother’s curse was dictated by the King of the Gypsies, Chorrojumo, who foresaw the disgrace of the Vargas family’s honor. This shame comes from Margarita’s double treason to her family and the gypsy community, for not only has...