What is the author's tone in the memoir, What You Have Heard Is True?

Forché’s tone in What You Have Heard is True is retrospective and deep. In general, Forché is writing this book about the past and can sometimes seems to be weighing the past decisions and actions that she has taken, ones that she is revisiting in this book. While Forché seems generally satisfied with the decisions that her younger self made--especially the decision to go to El Salvador and involve herself in Leonel's project in the first place--Forché's tone shifts when she describes her decision to let Alex, the Salvadoran who ran away from the military, stay in her home. As Forché writes, "At the time, giving Alex shelter seemed the right thing to do. It is what the Catholic activist Dorothy Day would have done, and what those in the hospitality house movement who were feeding the hungry and homeless in American cities, would also have done" (354). The tone here is more defensive and restless than at other points in the novel. Forché's inclusion of the phrase "At the time" suggests that she no longer agrees with this decision. However, rather than state this outright, Forché leaves this conclusion for the reader to make through inference. This tendency to imply, rather than state outright, is another of Forché's techniques in What You Have Heard is True.

Overall, Forché's tone in What You Have Heard is True is both self-reflective and observational, as much an analysis of herself as it is an analysis of El Salvador. The tone is also, often, uncertain and self-doubting, such as in the following example: “Perhaps to dissociate myself from those he considered idealogues, I might have said something critical about the Soviet Union at that moment” (175). What is striking about this passage is the way that Forché refuses to hide the fact that she is uncertain about her past memory. Ironically, this admission serves to give her greater authority, by suggesting that Forché is not someone who will try to evade her responsibility to tell the truth, even if the truth is that she cannot fully remember.