What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance (2019) by Carolyn Forché recounts her time in El Salvador during the late 1970s, just before the onset of a brutal civil war that would devastate the country. As a poet and translator, Forché was approached by Leonel Gómez Vides, who enlisted her as a witness to the atrocities being committed by the U.S.-backed military junta. Her memoir describes the harrowing scenes she encountered, including violence, corruption, and human suffering. Through vivid, stream-of-consciousness prose, Forché captures the devastation and the resilience of the people she meets. The book also explores her development of the concept of "poetry of witness," which posits poetry as a means of social advocacy by documenting the pain of war and urging readers to recognize and respond to such atrocities.
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