Servants who make do with little to no resources, to the simple farmers Military strongmen who live opulently off confiscated US aid, to public With figures who occupy the various sides of this conflict: from the Journey from the relative safety of a teaching job in SouthernĬalifornia, to a country on the brink of collapse, where poverty,

This nightmarish event sets the stage for scenes that follow: a 'Why doesn'tĪnyone do something?' the poet thinks she asks. Off their straw hats and pray over the remains. Severed limbs and reposition them around the mangled torso. Silently, hypnotically, the campesinos who accompany themĬollect the head, which is missing its eyes, lips, and tongue, and the His legs and one of his arms are gone, as is Notices flies and turkey buzzards humming about a corpse. Immediacy takes her to a situation that is difficult to absorb. To stay behind, but the poet is not good at waiting, and her urge for Salvador with a scene in which she and her guide, Leonel Gomez Vides,Įncounter a dismembered corpse in a cornfield. The shock that it really happened-this way.įorche's account of her poetic re-education begins in El Know from the beginning is that it is factual, all the more gripping for Provide a number of details from which one may draw conclusions. While thisĪccount offers no direct answers to the questions it raises, it does Traditionally been considered a masculine undertaking. It also addresses women, singularly and as a group, for whom war has Who must decide about their own place in an increasingly violent world. Relationship between creative self-expression and activism, and poets US citizens seeking to understand their country's involvement inĬentral American politics, students of literature measuring the Past') as her audience, this text has a much wider reach, including Sean-Christophe ('so he will know this part of his parents' ('who want to know more about their country') and her own son

Although Forche cites children of Salvadoran refugees Relationship between that experience and her development as a Poet of Up to and including the civil war in El Salvador (1979-1992) and the It concerns her involvement in events leading What You Have Heard Is True is the title of Carolyn Forche's Taken from the opening line of her poem 'The Colonel,' What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance

APA style: War Torn: What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance.

War Torn: What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance.' Retrieved from

MLA style: 'War Torn: What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance.' The Free Library.

What you have heard is true