A Form of Resistance: Reasons for keeping mementos

As Spain continues to struggle with economic depression, one of the country's best-loved poets tells how appreciating small mementos and everyday objects can help fight back against the gloom. Luis García Montero's insights reach beyond the turmoil of euro-zone austerity and speak to wider audiences beset by the instabilities of a rapidly-changing world. Now, for the first time, his prose work is available to English-speaking audiences in A Form of Resistance. The stories stem from the objects and the memories that inspire and reassure the author: the Zippo lighter that sparked his adolescent independence, his first vinyl record, an old packet of Goya cigarettes, and letters he wrote as a young boy to his father. These are personal vignettes but they also touch a universal nerve; they connect him - and us - to our sense of place in the world, a place where long forgotten events and experiences are recovered through keepsakes and utilitarian items. Holding on to that thread of history and keeping those memories alive is what García Montero describes as a form of resistance. His original Spanish-language book Una forma de resistencia took its inspiration from John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. García Montero writes: "The farmers of Oklahoma, condemned by drought and the banks, immigrated to California. They had to choose carefully which things they would lose forever. Against the so-called creative destruction of capitalism, metaphors and mementos preserve free will, love of life and respect for the past we embody." Luis García Montero was born in Granada, Spain in 1958. His award-winning work includes Habitaciones separadas (Loewe Prize and Spain's National Literature Prize, 1994) and La intimidad de la serpiente (National Critics Prize, 2003). His novel, Mañana no será lo que Dios quiera (Alfaguara, 2009), won Book of the Year from the Booksellers' Guild of Madrid. García Montero's poetry in English, translated by Katie King, is published online at Words Without Borders and in print in New European Poets by Graywolf Press. Katie King is a journalist, writer, and literary translator. Her career in journalism and publishing includes working as a correspondent for Reuters in Latin America, teaching journalism at George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs in Washington, DC, and leading a variety of digital and online news and publishing projects in the U.S. and Europe since the mid-1990s.Katie has lived, studied, and worked in Spain. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Hispanic Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle.