Carolyn Forché

Once Forché's story gathers momentum, it's hard to let the narrative go . . . Riveting . . . intricate and surprising

Indispensable . . . unflinching . . . Forché offers up a vast human landscape of terror, desperation and perseverance that stretches far beyond mere borders. It's more documentary than self-portrait, more camera than mirror. Reading it will change you, perhaps forever

Gripping . . . 'I could just as well write my poetry from the quiet of my own study,' Forché writes, 'but I had known since childhood that human suffering demanded a response, everywhere and always.' A portrait of the artist as political and poetic ingenue, What You Have Heard Is True is just such a response, a riveting account of how she made good on that conviction. It bears eloquent witness to injustice and atrocity and to how observing them shaped a fearless poet

Extraordinary . . . Written with a thriller writer's knack for narrative tension and a poet's gorgeous sentences and empathy . . . Though it took Forché half a lifetime to fully share what she saw - this time is also more cryptically recalled in her second book of poems, The Country Between Us (1982) - now is precisely when we need to see it

Her memoir traces her journey from political innocence to experience, and, in doing so, offers a model to others who might take the same journey . . . She remembers as much as possible, and the resulting memoir, once read, is difficult to forget

Forché looks with a poet's acute grasp of sensory detail ... She meets priests, poets, campesinos, retired generals ... She runs from death squads, acknowledges American complicity in Salvadoran military's tactics, searches for the bodies of friends dumped on the black sand beaches. One can imagine this memoir being made into a film in the mould of The Killing Fields ... Written with great care, this clear-eyed memoir and its evocative black-and-white photos bear powerful witness to the atrocities committed by a government to repress its own impoverished citizens

Forché ... writes with a startling, visceral clarity about grotesque events ... With her poems, and now with this exceptionally well-written and engrossing memoir, [Forché] has borne witness, remembered, tried to see. She has spent many years of her life telling the stories of El Salvador ... What You Have Heard Is True paints a stark, tangible and unforgettable picture of a nation descending into civil war and raises fascinating questions about the role of the observer ... Her writing has a way of scratching images into the memory

A Memoir of Witness and Resistance

Carolyn Forché is 27 when a mysterious stranger calling himself Leonel appears on her doorstep, having driven direct from El Salvador. A friend has heard rumours about who he might be - a communist, a CIA operative, a sharpshooter, a revolutionary, a small coffee farmer - but nobody seems to know for certain. 
 
Captivated for reasons she doesn't fully understand, she accepts his invitation to visit and learn about his country, and becomes enmeshed in the early stages of a civil war which will see a state turn death squads on its own people and over 100,000 dead. 
 
Told across peasant shanties, retired generals' grand homes, protest marches and safe houses on the run, this is the powerful true story of a woman's radical act of empathy and her fateful encounter with an intriguing man who will change the course of her life.

Carolyn Forché

Praise for What You Have Heard Is True

Once Forché's story gathers momentum, it's hard to let the narrative go . . . Riveting . . . intricate and surprising

Indispensable . . . unflinching . . . Forché offers up a vast human landscape of terror, desperation and perseverance that stretches far beyond mere borders. It's more documentary than self-portrait, more camera tha ...

Gripping . . . 'I could just as well write my poetry from the quiet of my own study,' Forché writes, 'but I had known since childhood that human suffering demanded a response, everywhere and always.' A portrait of t ...

Once Forché's story gathers momentum, it's hard to let the narrative go . . . Riveting . . . intricate and surprising

Indispensable . . . unflinching . . . Forché offers up a vast human landscape of terror, desperation and perseverance that stretches far beyond mere borders. It's more documentary than self-portrait, more camera tha ...

Gripping . . . 'I could just as well write my poetry from the quiet of my own study,' Forché writes, 'but I had known since childhood that human suffering demanded a response, everywhere and always.' A portrait of t ...

Once Forché's story gathers momentum, it's hard to let the narrative go . . . Riveting . . . intricate and surprising

Indispensable . . . unflinching . . . Forché offers up a vast human landscape of terror, desperation and perseverance that stretches far beyond mere borders. It's more documentary than self-portrait, more camera tha ...

Gripping . . . 'I could just as well write my poetry from the quiet of my own study,' Forché writes, 'but I had known since childhood that human suffering demanded a response, everywhere and always.' A portrait of t ...

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