His daughter filed her nails, his son went out for the night … The moon swung bare on its black cord over the house. I am a bit torn about writing a review for this book. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. Eventually, Leonel tells Carolyn that it is time for her to return home; the country is too dangerous. margin-bottom: 10px; He clears a space on Forché's dining room table and begins to graph the history of El Salvador, in pictures and in tumbling, insistent words. There, she witnesses horrifying images of violence and torture. Many of us have forgotten what happened in that country during the period of this memoir (and younger readers might not know at all). This is the story of that life, written with the poet's eye and ear for stark detail and with a born storyteller's narrative instinct. Forche had no idea what she was getting into when she went to El Salvador. The government death squads terrorized the country, and more than 70,000 people died, among them many women and children. Whatever they were doing there was never, exactly, explained and by the end of the book I felt as hot and dusty as if I’d been along on their endless van rides. But I had the sense the author had a reason for that, and I think the book turned in the second half and became terrifying. border-bottom: 3px solid #000; I think if the author had conveyed the story in the past tense and more from a historian point of view it would have been more meaningful. Carolyn Forché’s memoir What You Have Heard Is True is the story of her coming to consciousness as a poet and as a human rights activist. It's a tragedy. Not that the memoir is like a Saw movie or anything but it included enough explicit violence - beheadings, disembowelings, corpses eaten by animals, dismemberments etc - that this. .more-author { Gomez simply countered with, “Well, you’ll have to change that.” The war he predicted turned out to be extraordinarily bloody. Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. The country descends into violence, and Carolyn spends the next several years trying to tell Americans her story. Look at the cover of the book: it's a picture of her (a glamour shot). I was in his house. Great American poets die broke in bad hotels. It's all about the horrors she saw and how she felt (ME, ME, ME). What You Have Heard Is True recounts the several visits Forché made to El Salvador between January 1978 and March 1980 and the extent to which those visits marked her. As violence escalates in the country, Carolyn is moved to Hotel X. Forché is the author of four books of poetry: “It was as if he had stood me squarely before the world, removed the blindfold, and ordered me to open my eyes.”, “People think that what happens to someone else has nothing to do with them. This is a book about men and women exhibiting extraordinary courage and perseverance in El Salvador just prior to their twelve-year-old civil war (1979-1992) that the UN estimated killed 75,000 people. She credits her experiences in El Salvador with moving her writing from the realm of the personal into the realm of the political. On the television was a cop show. Welcome back. Over this time, Leonel tells Carolyn the history of his country and describes the rising tensions with the military there. … The parrot said hello on the terrace. This story begins in 1977, when Forché was twenty-seven and “too young to have thought very much about the whole of my life, its shape and purpose. 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