What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir Of Witness And Resistance

"When poet Carolyn Forché was in her late 20s, a friend’s cousin showed up at her door. The charismatic stranger had driven from El Salvador to persuade her to visit and, perhaps, write about his country, which, in the late 1970s, was on the verge of a violent civil war. Forché decides to go and witnesses the poverty of the country’s citizens and the immorality of the military government. This is an adventure story – together they dodge death squads and find refuge in remote villages – but it’s also about radical empathy and the awakening of social conscience."