The Hope We Still Hang Onto

A vivid and inspiring account of the author's experiences while a political prisoner during the Pinochet era. It begins in 1981 with Arinda's clandestine return to Chile from exile and her subsequent capture by the secret police. She was one of many political prisoners, whose crime was stubborn resistance to the military dictatorship and its programme of forced disappearances, torture and assassination. During her eight years in jail she and her cell-mates learned to live together and continue the struggle from the inside. We also witness her growing understanding of the discrimination-from all sides-that she faced as a woman, and her discovery of the therapeutic power of writing, especially of poetry, Despite the fragility of human bodies subjected to inhuman degradation, Arinda's account shows how personal strength and solidarity among the female political prisoners played a crucial part in helping them to survive.

The book was originally published in Spanish under the title De Memoria: Entre Arpilleras y Carbon de Piedra and has now been translated into English by Barbara Mitchell. She writes that It was "an engrossing task to translate De Memoria. This intensely personal account includes a number of poems written by the author, her friends and family. In translating them I have tended to focus on literal meaning rather than making them poetic in English, as they are directly related to and expand on Arinda's story."