What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance

by Carolyn Forché

the art of feigned retreats.

If you don’t want to go, fine, but don’t say you never had the chance.

Prison Notebooks by Antonio Gramsci

imprisoned by Mussolini,

possessive

pronouns

“I was born Catholic, yes,” I said. “I attended Catholic school for twelve years. But those of us who no longer attend Mass are called fallen or fallen away. I’m fallen.”

I was

quite young,

with a romantic view of ...

Leonel

“I question-mark the lies, and I exclaim at the stupidity.

“You know how, when you are in school, there’s a certain group of kids who sort of take over? Not bullies exactly, but you know, the kids who try to dominate everyone else.”

“Maybe some of them really are bullies.”

Nâzim Hikmet,

You can’t make a difference in the world by going to parties.”

He was pulling into the parking lot of Benihana of Tokyo, San Salvador. “Leonel chose this place, so don’t blame me. He’s inside with a group of people. I’m a vegetarian myself, but I’ll be joining you. There’s always

remember thinking that there was a good chance I had made a mistake, and if so, it could be rectified quite easily

Blanca had been talking with Leonel, but she stood and poured coffee for me, then sat back down with her head in her hands.

delegation

Silvio Rodríguez,”

“I’m taking you to see how most people live. Most people in the world.”

trust them.”

learn how to detect deception in others, which, he assured me, is a skill that can be acquired.

I would learn to review my experiences for the missed details, and to keep in mind that while I was observing others,

“This place is a symphony of illusion,” Leonel often said, “and an orchestra needs a conductor.”

This is what oppression feels like. Now you have begun to learn something.

You are always asking me why the people don’t do something, why they put up with this brutality, why they

don’t rise up against it, this and that. Okay. You’re exhausted, you’re shocked, you’re sick to your stomach, and you feel dirty.

you can learn to read the present, without preconceptions, you will better know which of all possible futures will come to pass.

If someone promises to do great things, ask them first for something small, like a bridge or a cow.”

“I believe with my life,” he said, “with how I live.”

The truer conversation flowed in rivers

of fear

and caution beneath the music of what could ...

“praxis,”

“human action to change reality”

I believe that if death encounters us in the path of our duty, that then is the moment in which we die in the way that God wills.”

My heart and intellect and soul were aligned with what I was doing in the world, and the people around me were also living and working in this way, and on behalf of each other were willing to live at risk.

was in Spain that men learned that one can be right and still be beaten, that force can vanquish spirit, that there are times when courage is not its own reward.

If you hit a nail with a wooden mallet with the same strength with which you would hit it with a steel hammer, the nail will go into the mallet instead of the wall.

“You want to know what is revolutionary, Papu? To tell the truth.

That is what you wil...

you return to your country. That is all I’m...

Within a week of my departure, Monseñor Romero would be assassinated in the chapel of Divine Providence while celebrating Mass for the

repose of a woman’s soul.

More than one hundred thousand people would fill the cathedral, the plaza, and the streets for his funeral, bishops from many nations, priests and nuns, but no g...

The next few years involved turmoil in my personal life, a move to the East Coast,

teaching at two universities and in the old territorial prisons of Alaska, and the publication of my second book of poems, The Country Between Us.

We must hope without hoping. We must hope when we have no hope.