Gypsy Cante (New World Writing)
Nestled in her silk scarves, my mother always kept a bar of Myrurgia’s Maja soap, wrapped in the distinctive red-and-black paper with a flamenco dancer on the label. Because my father—an American my mother met in medical school—had been stationed at the Rota naval base, near Cadiz and the Strait of Gibraltar, I was born in Spain and we stayed there for two years. I remembered nothing of those days but I’d heard stories: My parents drank fino sherry in bars and ate tapas made from tiny sparrows and wild boar...