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Shared letters: writing and reading practices in the correspondence of migrant families in northern Spain

Abstract Letters generated in the emigration context are produced in a family environment and designed to circulate within it. This correspondence had great symbolic value: it represented those who were absent, and it was vital to ensuring family support. To explore these family documents, it is necessary to devote some time to the situations in which the texts were generated and the contexts in which they were received. Approaches to epistolary testimony such as this usually take as reference the sender and recipient of the letter, and consider the exchange as something that took place between two individuals who based their relationship on paper. But behind this sender and this receiver, there was often a whole community of scribes and readers. When we study these writings, we notice the polyphonic nature of these letters. When a family member emigrated, it was not only the nuclear family that was broken up; there was a multiplication of voices interested in getting noticed through paper and pen, and they did so by delegating the act of writing and by including their own notes in the writings of others. In this sense, the letters allow us to glimpse different voices, and follow numerous individuals in their exchange of letters. This shared form of writing is the focus of analysis in this article. Here, I draw my analysis from a series of correspondence exchanged by emigrants and their families from the region of Asturias (in northern Spain) who immigrated to different parts of America from the 1850s to the 1930s. These letters offer rich historical testimonies of immigrants and their loved ones who stayed in touch over large distances.