Writing Friendship

Abstract

This book has been written by two co-authors, Liria Hernández and Paloma Gay y Blasco. We use two different fonts in order to make visible each of our voices. Liria and Paloma met in 1992, when both were young women and Paloma was doing anthropological fieldwork among Liria’s family and neighbours. After Paloma left to return to finish her Ph.D. in the UK, they started writing to each other and did so regularly for over fifteen years, until Liria left her family in 2009. Paloma’s letters were lost, but they use Liria’s to illuminate their very different but intertwined life stories as Gitana street seller and Paya anthropologist, and the changing shape of their relationship. The letters are a rich ethnographic document that throws light on the lives of Gitanos and Payos, on Spanish womanhood and on the complex human connections that underpin anthropology.