This paper aims to reflect on the relationships built during fieldwork in anthropology from an intersectional perspective by articulating the social markers of gender, race and nationality. Based on my research experiences in two contexts, Cape Verde and Senegal, I intend to reflect on the relational universes that are a condition for the production of ethnographic knowledge in two dimensions: personal relationships and the processes of knowledge construction. My starting point is the understanding that ethnography is a theory based on the diversity and flexibility of the practices found in the lives of our interlocutors and that it is produced in relationship with them. As a social relationship, interactions between researchers and research partners/interlocutors are permeated by social labels that inform these relationships, such as gender, race, class, ethnicity, nationality, etc. There have been long debates about the power of the researcher in the field, but what about when things become more complex, and the relationships are less about who has or doesn't have power and more about the ability to negotiate relationships? I try to reflect on the dimensions of gender, race and nationality in the relationships built with my research partners. In particular, I reflect on how stereotypes about Brazilian women (informed by the triad samba, mulata and sexuality) have entered my field relations, requiring a constant negotiation of my insertion into local networks of sociability. Going further, I reflect on how the local relational dynamics between men and women, largely informed by a “logic of gallantry” on the part of men, has been a constant challenge in my relationships with women and men in the field. What are the challenges and potentialities of negotiating my place as a white, Brazilian and woman in the work and friendship relationships that shape my research?