What You Have Heard Is True

A Memoir of Witness and Resistance

By: Carolyn Forché

Narrated by: Carolyn Forché

Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins

Publisher's summary

2019 National Book Award Finalist

“Reading it will change you, perhaps forever.” (San Francisco Chronicle)

“Astonishing, powerful, so important at this time.” (Margaret Atwood)

What You Have Heard is True is a devastating, lyrical, and visionary memoir about a young woman’s brave choice to engage with horror in order to help others. Written by one of the most gifted poets of her generation, this is the story of a woman’s radical act of empathy, and her fateful encounter with an intriguing man who changes the course of her life.

Carolyn Forché is 27 when the mysterious stranger appears on her doorstep. The relative of a friend, he is a charming polymath with a mind as seemingly disordered as it is brilliant. She’s heard rumors from her friend about who he might be: a lone wolf, a communist, a CIA operative, a sharpshooter, a revolutionary, a small coffee farmer, but according to her, no one seemed to know for certain. He has driven from El Salvador to invite Forché to visit and learn about his country. Captivated for reasons she doesn’t fully understand, she accepts and becomes enmeshed in something beyond her comprehension.

Together, they meet with high-ranking military officers, impoverished farm workers, and clergy desperately trying to assist the poor and keep the peace. These encounters are a part of his plan to educate her, but also to learn for himself just how close the country is to war. As priests and farm-workers are murdered and protest marches attacked, he is determined to save his country, and Forché is swept up in his work and in the lives of his friends. Pursued by death squads and sheltering in safe houses, the two forge a rich friendship, as she attempts to make sense of what she’s experiencing and establish a moral foothold amidst profound suffering. This is the powerful story of a poet’s experience in a country on the verge of war, and a journey toward social conscience in a perilous time.

©2019 Carolyn Forché (P)2019 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

One of New York Times' critic Jennifer Szalai's 10 Best Books of 2019

A New York Times Notable Book

One of Electric Literature's 15 Best Nonfiction Books of 2019

“One recovered incident, person, landscape, and image at a time, the narrative advances, accruing tremendous authority and emotional power. It amounts to almost a shamanistic transmitting of Forché’s experience into our own…. What Leonel Gómez was really offering when he lured her down to El Salvador was the chance to become Carolyn Forché. Anyone who reads this magnificent memoir will partake of that luminous transformation.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Extraordinary . . . What You Have Heard Is True challenges us as Americans to see the people arriving at our border not only with empathy but also with the knowledge that their arrival is a manifestation of a shared history—of our shared fate.” —Suzy Hansen, The Nation

“Why would a naïve 27-year-old American poet, who speaks Spanish brokenly and knows nothing about the isthmus of the Americas, accept the invitation of a near-stranger to join him in El Salvador, on the brink of war? And why would this rumored lone wolf/communist/CIA operative/world-class marksman/small-time coffee farmer invite her? Those questions animate Forché’s dramatic memoir about her transformation into an activist for peace, justice, and human rights. Forché vividly recounts how she became enmeshed with the mysterious, politically charged man and with clergy and farmworkers as violence ensued, in a fierce narrative punctuated with short prose poem vignettes that she notes are ‘written in pencil.’ —The National Book Review

Amazing and beautiful

The writing is eloquent and poetic. Listening to her voice I can imagine the smells, the places and the feelings she felt. I imagine being there with her and she brings me in close. The story is compelling and structured in a way that puts the pieces together slowly allowing me to savor the story at every turn. Truly beautiful.

Beautifully told

This painful history is beautifully told by this gifted writer and narrator. There are lessons about human suffering and endurance, cruelty and hope, all facets of humanity and inhumanity

Surprisingly compelling

The author as narrator worked well, which is not always the case. expanded my world.

excellent

This is an excellent captivating beautifully written memoir. Beautifully narrated too (by the author). highly recommended.

amazing, raw, and so necessary

poetic words expose the world of a naive North American and the challenges people faced press and post war in El Salvador.

Perfect

I love when memoirs are narrorated by the author however some do not do the best job. She did amazing. It was also very eye opening, the most impactful parts for me are the ones where she is trying to make us understand the oppressed and why they are too worn down to rise up.

Beautifully written and narrated by author

Forché brings to life the day-to-day human struggles of a El Salvador on the brink of war with courage, clarity and compassion. In beautiful prose, she weaves her personal transformation to human rights activist leaving me with an education about the greater political economy and great admiration of her as a brave woman.

Better than reading the book!

Carolyn Forche's narration of her own book was excellent, as it should be, she is a poet.

A very touching, very real story

The fact that these are real events of Carolyn Forché's life, of Leonel Gómez Vides and of El Salvador history, is almost hard to believe, even being a Salvadoran myself and knowing well the history of the country. It's a really touching story and Carolyn performance of her own experiences is very moving. The facts related here happened more than 40 years ago, but they remain very relevant today.

A Book for the World we live in now

What happened in El Salvador continues throughout the world. If more of us could see through the insight and blessings of mediation in Leonel’s heart and mind and Caroline’s evolution we could heal and do good. One of the most powerful books I have ever listened to.