Writing Friendship: A Reciprocal Ethnography (Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology)

Review “Engrossing, provocative, moving, analytically fascinating – this reciprocal ethnography is all these. Most importantly, what we find in Writing Friendship is a close-up, laid bare demonstration of how people make meaning out of one another’s ideas and experiences. Fascinating.” (Christina Toren, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, University of St Andrews, UK)“On rare occasions you come across a book that you don’t want to finish, a book that inspires so much that it takes your breath away. Writing Friendship is that kind of book. Through creative experimentation, the authors, who come from very different social worlds in Spain, stitch together a marvelous story. They show us how slowly developed long-term friendships can shape the kind of deep ethnography that underscores the wondrous complexity of the human condition. This is a book that has soul.” (Paul Stoller, author of Yaya’s Story: The Quest for Well Being in the World)“A wonderfully and beautifully written work. Gay y Blasco and Hernández uniquely position emergent and shared story as a framework for co-interpretation, collaborative research and writing.” (Luke Eric Lassiter, author of The Chicago Guide to Collaborative Ethnography) Product Description This book tells the remarkable story of the friendship between Liria Hernández, a Roma woman from Madrid, and Paloma Gay y Blasco, a non-Roma anthropologist. In this unique reciprocal experiment, the former informant returns the gaze to write about the anthropologist, her life and her environment. Through finely crafted and deeply moving text, Hernández and Gay y Blasco suggest new ways of doing and writing anthropology.The dialogue between Hernández and Gay y Blasco provides a courageous account of the entanglements and rewards of anthropological research. Drawing on letters, conversations, and fieldnotes gathered over twenty-five years, each of the authors talks about herself, the other, and the impact of anthropology on their two lives. They examine their intertwined trajectories as Spanish women and reflect on the challenges of devising their own reciprocal genre. Blending ethnography, life story and memoir, they undermine the dichotomy between author and subject around which scholarship still revolves. From the Back Cover This book tells the remarkable story of the friendship between Liria Hernández, a Roma woman from Madrid, and Paloma Gay y Blasco, a non-Roma anthropologist. In this unique reciprocal experiment, the former informant returns the gaze to write about the anthropologist, her life and her environment. Through finely crafted and deeply moving text, Hernández and Gay y Blasco suggest new ways of doing and writing anthropology.The dialogue between Hernández and Gay y Blasco provides a courageous account of the entanglements and rewards of anthropological research. Drawing on letters, conversations, and fieldnotes gathered over twenty-five years, each of the authors talks about herself, the other, and the impact of anthropology on their two lives. They examine their intertwined trajectories as Spanish women and reflect on the challenges of devising their own reciprocal genre. Blending ethnography, life story and memoir, they undermine the dichotomy between author and subject around which scholarship still revolves. About the Author Paloma Gay y Blasco is a social anthropologist teaching at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, UK.Liria Hernández lives and works in Madrid, Spain.