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What You Have Heard Is True
- A Memoir of Witness and Resistance
- Narrated by: Carolyn Forché
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
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What You Have Heard Is True
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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.
What the critics say
“In this galvanizing memoir, [Forché] recounts her political awakening under fire with a poet’s lyrical acuity and a storyteller’s drama.... Forché recounts her frightening and transformative encounters with scorching specificity and portrays her brilliant and courageous mentor and other resistance fighters with wonder and gratitude. This clarion work of remembrance, this indelible testimony to a horrific battle in the unending struggle for human rights, justice, and peace, stands with the dispatches of Isabel Allende, Eduardo Galeano, Pablo Neruda, and Elena Poniatowska.” (Booklist, starred review)
"Episode by episode, dodging death squads, Forché builds a story filled with violence and intrigue worthy of Graham Greene around which a river of blood flows - doing so, unstanched, with the avid support of America's leaders." (Kirkus Reviews)
“Carolyn Forché asks us not only to hear, but to see, the scale of human and moral devastation in El Salvador. For those of us who are citizens and residents of the United States, Forché’s powerful, moving, and disturbing memoir also demands that we recognize our country’s responsibility for the atrocities committed by the El Salvadoran military. As is the case with her poetry, Forché’s nonfiction asserts the need for truth - in our politics, in our writing, in our witnessing.” (Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer)
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What listeners say about What You Have Heard Is True
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- William Garcia
- 2024-04-05
A tense account of the clouds before the storm
The book itself tells a story that shows the evolution of a single person, from not knowing much about El Salvador, to becoming engulfed in what is to be the nation's greatest conflict. I think having the author narrate this audiobook is a brilliant decision, as it has undertones of her memory engrained in her reading of the text. It feels as if you're having her tell you about her life, with each part of the story feeling as if she is right back in 1979, and we are watching her journey as it happened. What you'll find here is not an exposé of the civil war from start to finish, yet the event has so much rich history, that even a story like this that takes place right before the war goes into full swing is incredibly important to tell. The growing tension is captivating, and you will become invested.
My family history is already tied to the civil war, I was born into knowing what happened and who it affected. Seeing the perspective of someone who all of this is new to, and hearing their emotions through the whole experience is incredibly fascinating.
It's worth your time to check this one out, even for the uneducated about El Salvador, this will give you more things to think about by the time it's over.
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