Paulina Stevens is a fortune teller, born into a family of fortune tellers. At least, that’s what she’s always been told by her Roma family in California, who see only one future for her: a community marriage, a career as a palm reader, and as little contact with the outside world as possible. Paulina is docile. She gets married, has kids, and reads a lot of hands. Until she starts to doubt. Can she really predict the future? And what is actually wrong with those ‘others’? One day she decides to escape, and that causes so many problems that she panics at the door of a journalist, who four years later decides to make a podcast of her life story. A historical dive into the nomadic history of a cultural group once called ‘Gypsies’.
A version of this article also appeared in the June 17, 2023 newspaper.