In 1569, in the midst of the bloody violence of the second Morisco (forced converts to Christianity from Islam) rebellion in the Castilian Kingdom of Granada, Hernando de Guzmán and Álvaro el Guajany submitted a petition to the royal Spanish government for special permission to travel from the city of Granada to the Morisco town of Pinillos in the Alpujarran countryside for the annual silk harvest. The men, Moriscos residing in the San Salvador parish of the Morisco Albaicín neighborhood in Granada, warned the crown that if it denied their petition and they were unable to return to the mountains they would be unable to “raise [silk], [and they would] have nothing with which to pay [their] taxes.” At the end of their petition, the men added that they would not go to harvest silk alone, but rather that they would need to go “with our women to cultivate the silk.” The men revealed only at the end of their petition the vital role their wives played in the family economy. The story of Guzmán and el Guajany was a story of survival. Moriscos used a variety of strategies to survive in a world that increasingly saw them as hostile. At times survival required cooperation with authorities and at other times it meant resisting Spanish hegemony, even with violence. At the most basic level, survival meant maintaining the ability to feed, clothe, and provide shelter for their families. In another sense, survival for Moriscos was the survival of their Arabic-Islamic culture and way of life by resisting conversion and assimilation. Silk was a fundamental part of the strategies Moriscos used to survive in Granada in the sixteenth century. Morisco families relied on silk for their basic everyday needs. Silk was also a part of the Andalusi culture that Moriscos sought to preserve. Women, as the kingdom's main silk producers, had a major role to play in the preservation of Granadan sericulture-- a process that took place in urban Morisco households and hillside farms all over the Kingdom of Granada. By reading records such as this petition “against the grain,” this paper seeks to recover the voices of ordinary Granadans to understand how they responded to their changing world after the conquest. In particular, I will argue that women in particular had an active role to play in ensuring the survival of their families and communities through conquest, war, and expulsion.