Of course, it’s not all dim violence El Salvador is a geographically beautiful country, and there’s plentiful prose as Forché describes its famed volcanoes, black sand beaches, cane, cotton and coffee fields its beautiful light and cathedrals, monkeys and iguanas as well as the papayas and coconuts even the thousands of desaparecidos - the disappeared - once took comfort in.įorché’s subsequent and formidable career in both human rights and poetry grew directly from these Salvadoran experiences and it is years later when she coins the phrase “poetry of witness.” This term is now used to describe poets who pen lyrical dispatches as witness to the tsunami of barbarity that was the 20th century, prior and now beyond. Gomez wants Forché to see, truly see his country. She becomes involved with movie plot-like intrigue, witnessing first-hand the murders, massacres, and relentless drone of violence that was El Salvador at that historical moment. Its focus is the relationship between Forché and her mentor Gomez - a cousin of Claribel Algería whose poetry Forché was translating - that is the central pole on which swirls a cascade of often bizarre and cryptic meetings with corrupt high-level military officers, disenfranchised campesinos and endless safe houses. Renowned poet and human rights activist Forché’s new memoir, “What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance,” is a lyrical, potent book specific to a time and place. With his polymath mind and dimless passion for his country’s survival, he entices the sheltered young woman to follow him to El Salvador to see for herself what is happening to his country during the lead up to the Salvadoran Civil War, the years the stranger refers to as “the silence of misery endured.”

It’s as a 27-year-old Catholic-schooled writer teaching in Southern California that Carolyn Forché first opens her door to an enigmatic Salvadoran man, Leonel Gomez Vides.

Book what you have heard is true