Review of What You Have Heard is True by Carolyn Forché

*What You Have Heard is True* by Carolyn Forche (2019). Published by Allen Lane.

What You Have Heard is True is a memoir I’ve been meaning to read for a hot minute, and then I checked it out from my library over a year ago now. I read the first thirty-ish pages, stopped, and then returned the book and didn’t think about it for a hot minute.

What ended up forcing me to read it mentally was when my friend, who studies at an MFA program in California, was texting me about how she ended up in a workshop being taught by Carolyn Forché for poetry, and then I mentioned to her that I liked what I had read from this memoir.

So I purchased a copy online. That’s something I never really do because of how anti-consumption I am, and I try not to buy books that I know I can get easily at my local library. But still I had bought this one and added it to my physical collection.

It took me another few months after buying it to force myself to sit down after a dentist appointment where I was in the waiting room for awhile, and then I continued from there. It took me about two days to get through this one, but I genuinely enjoyed the journey Forche takes us through.

Onwards with the review!

After a man shows up at her door from El Salvador, Carolyn Forche finds herself drawn into a civil war.

One day, poet Carolyn Forche is shocked to open her door to find Leonel Gómez Vides standing right there. He says he has driven from El Salvador to see her, and has a mission that he thinks she should join in on. He tells her about the conflict that’s ramping up in his native El Salvador, and Forche, who has worked with Spanish poetry translations, is the writer he thinks could document the serious wrongdoings that are happening in the country.

Naturally, no one has any real idea at this point at what has been happening in the Central American country.

Forche is obviously hesistant at first, but after realizing she can’t stop thinking about and the possibilities of going there, ends up agreeing. With the money from a recent fellowship she has won, she heads off to El Salvador and joins Leonel, who brings her into the folds of his operations.

At the point at which Forche arrives in the country, it hasn’t broken out into civil war yet, but it’s getting there. At first, he leaves her with people in the countryside, forcing her to navigate her not-so-great Spanish skills.

There’s the doctor who works in the countryside and doesn’t have all the medications and whatnot she needs for her poor rural patients, a woman whose aunt ends up in the crossfire and death is highly suspicious, and then there are the general poor people in the countryside who are swept up in the ensuing conflict.

In Leonel’s trusty car at one point, the two end up stumbling upon the body of a man and his son on the side of the road. They have been killed by people that Leonel worries are still around, forcing them to leave the bodies behind.

One of the most striking parts of the memoir for me is when Carolyn is sent inside of the prison with one of the guards, who brings her into one of the most volatile sections. She’s posing as an old family friend in order to get access to the prison, and is told to act like she is lost and not dawdle in this section.

When she gets into the room, she is horrified to realize there are men trapped in the dark in boxes with tiny slats they could see out of. I could not imagine being trapped inside of a barrel for an indefinite amount of time, that’s completely and utterly horrifying to fathom.

Forche does end up going home at the halfway point because she still has a job in the states she must attend to, but she becomes obsessed with the situation she left behind. She packs a suitcase full of medicine, thinking of the doctor from earlier, and ends up coming back after Leonel drives back to the States and gets her.

It is her job to witness the horror of what’s happening abroad and tell the world of what she has seen through firsthand accounts, and that’s exactly what she’s going to do.

Overall Thoughts

As a poet whose work strives to witness and tell the stories that are often buried, I found this to be a fascinating memoir. I truly look up to Forche as a writer and journalist myself, and so digging deeper into this specific experience that shaped her work later as a writer and creative was an interesting one.

Although I usually don’t like to have physical copies, I am glad I have this one to thumb through when I’m looking for inspiration.

I think it’s also important to revisit this life experience she had through the nonfiction form and not strictly poetry, and I would say this focuses more on her relationship with Leonel and how her relationship with El Salvador as a whole evolves throughout her time there.

You can’t be this direct with poetry, I appreciate the choice of form.

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