What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance by Carolyn Forche
Nelson Mandela said, “Poetry cannot block a bullet or still a sjambok, but it can bear witness to brutality—thereby cultivating a flower in a graveyard. Carolyn Forché’s Against Forgetting is itself a blow against tyranny, against prejudice, against injustice. It bears witness to the evil we would prefer to forget, but never can—and never should.”
A stranger rang her doorbell. She answered the door. That small act began a gut-wrenching time in Carolyn Forche’s life as she followed this stranger, Leonel Gomez Vides, to El Salvador, a country on the brink of war. Forche protested she was not the writer for the job- he needed a journalist not a poet. But, Leonel came from a place where,”... poets are taken seriously. They’re appointed to diplomatic posts, or they’re assassinated, or put into prison but, one way or the other, taken seriously” (54). Leonel was looking for an observer, for someone who would witness the stark beauty and overwhelming corruption of his home, and tell the truth of it in her writing. She was his avenue of testimonial. In telling this story, Forche gave voice to their resistance.
Forche traveled to El Salvador on a Guggenheim fellowship, ostensibly to work with Amnesty International. Leonel became her guide as he arranged meetings with poverty-stricken farmers, overnights with a series of women fighting corruption in their own way through medicine and education, and dinners with corrupt, high-profile military officials. He also drives through backroads and villages to help her see a more complete picture of the systemic oppression and persecution happening in El Salvador from the poor to the clergy. Forche recorded it all.
“I wrote down in pencil what I saw, what I heard…I would pay attention, and try to see as much as I could, not the world as imagined in my continuous waking dream, but as it was, not only the obvious but the hidden, not only the water cántaros but their weight, not only their weight but why it was necessary to carry water such distances...I have heard it said that to write is to dream on paper. In these notebooks from the time of El Salvador there are no dreams.” (190)
Her observations often emerge in short chapters called “Written in Pencil.” These brief moments feel stream of consciousness with the continuous run-on sentences, and lack of punctuation. They seem to mirror the disorientation Forche must have felt witnessing such brutality, but also reflect the temporal quality of existence in El Salvador she observes. One moment you could be hacking sugar cane, and the next you could be dismembered by a death squad, erased.
The descriptions of atrocities witnessed are horrifying: the too-small wooden boxes that served as solitary confinement for prisoners where they could be left for years; the casual street abductions by death squads and subsequent body dump sites; a disemboweled corpse by the roadside left for carrion birds. There is an evolution in Forche’s stark rendering — early on there is a curiosity and emotional quality to her interactions, she is still uncertain why she is there, or what her voice can add to this country’s struggle. But as the memoir moves on, she becomes more detached and methodical in her narration. She no longer cries or questions— she records in camera-like detail. She is not accepting of what happens, but she understands her role is to witness without looking away. This shift in Forche is heart-wrenching. There is an immediacy conveyed through the simple retelling of such encompassing corruption and violence. Truth becomes paramount. Awareness necessary. It is no longer about if a poet can tell this story or who Leonel truly is. Forche finds herself as a Poet of Witness as she captures and records El Salvador’s story. To read this memoir is to see Forche evolve as a writer.
“It was as if he had stood me squarely before the world, removed the blindfold, and ordered me to open my eyes.” (384)
Testimonial Literature, born in Latin America, records and presents the life stories of marginalized, oppressed people. Forche employs this genre as a form of remembering what many would like to forget. She fills in the gaps for those marginalized by society. Her poems from this time, as well as this memoir reveal the evil parts of history we would rather erase, like so many “disappeared” whose photos were pinned to Margarita’s bulletin board. In publishing this work, Forche fulfilled Gomez’s challenge to be a revolutionary, and tell the truth.
About Carrie Honaker
Carrie Honaker is a writer currently based in Panama City Beach, Florida. She studied Literature at Florida State University, but has worn many hats including restaurateur and teacher. Carrie is a voracious reader and kitchen sorcery addict who found her inner writer at the Blue Ridge Writing Project in 2010. Most days you can find her plowing through a book, writing or dabbling with a new recipe.
Carrie’s work has appeared in ALCA Lines, Virginia English Journal, and Digital Is. She also regularly writes about experiences in the classroom, moments in the kitchen, and all things travel & restaurants on her site, StrawbabiesandChocolateBeer.com. Currently, she is revising her foodoir about life growing up on a farm in Vermont interspersed with family recipes. You can find her on Twitter: @writeonhonaker, Instagram: @corkdorkva, on Goodreads & Trip Advisor.
