America Is in the Heart, sometimes subtitled A Personal History, is a 1946 semi-autobiographical novel written by Filipino American immigrant poet, fiction writer, short story teller, and activist, Carlos Bulosan. The novel was one of the earliest published books that presented the experiences of the immigrant and working class based on an Asian American point of view and has been regarded as "[t]he premier text of the Filipino-American experience."

Plot

Born in 1913, Bulosan recounts his boyhood in the Philippines. A Filipino translation of the book, Nasa Puso ang Amerika, was published in 1993.

Historical context

Great Depression

As can be evidenced by Carlos Bulosan’s America Is in the Heart, the life of a Filipino migrant worker during the Great Depression was anything but easy. In reality, the life of any Filipino in the United States during this time period was “lonely” and “damned,” as Bulosan described in a letter to a friend. When he and his friend José arrived in California in 1930, “the lives of Filipinos were cheaper than those of dogs.”

The anti-Filipino sentiment that plagued the American mindset during this time period can be observed in a few separate events. The most violent and well-known incident occurred in California in 1930: four hundred white vigilantes attacked a Filipino night club, injuring dozens and killing one. In 1933, California and twelve other state legislatures restricted Filipino-white marriages. Lastly, in 1935 the Welch Bill offered a fixed sum of cash to pay for the fare of Filipinos who would voluntarily go back to the Philippines. As documented in Bulosan's novel, “fraternity is not limited to biological brothers; the network of young migrant men from the same region serves not only as a microcosm of the Filipino community, but as a gallery of alternative lives and fates...” Bulosan's writings reached a wide audience, a number of whom were feeling similar strife due to the state of the nation's economy. The agriculture community in the West, especially in California, was characterized by a deficit in jobs and a life of transience. Bulosan's writing provides an accurate first-hand description of the uncertainty of a migrant's life, and while there is speculation about the amount of truth in his writing, one cannot deny that he was exposed first-hand to the struggles of The Great Depression.

Filipino-American literature

Bulosan's message

America Is in the Heart serves as a piece of activist literature. It sheds light on the racial and class issues that affected Filipino immigrants throughout the beginning of the twentieth century. The autobiography attempts to show Filipino Americans the structure of American society and the oppression inflicted upon Filipino's living in America. E. San Juan, Jr., in “Carlos Bulosan, Filipino Writer-Activist”, states, “American administrators, social scientist, intellectuals, and others made sense of Filipinos: we were (like American Indians) savages, half childish primitives, or innocuous animals that can be either civilized with rigorous tutelage or else slaughtered outright”. In America Is in the Heart, Bulosan properly shows the reader the animalistic treatment that was inflicted upon the Filipino's on the west coast. Bulosan states, “At that time, there was ruthless persecution of the Filipinos throughout the Pacific Coast”. He wants Filipinos and even white Americans to realize the harmful treatment of Filipinos and the problems of society.

Bulosan continues his activism through irony in his novel. “Behind the triumphant invocation of a mythical 'America' linger the unforgettable images of violence, panicked escape, horrible mutilation, and death in Bulosan's works”. At a time when Asians were being persecuted in America, Bulosan was attempting to distinguish Filipino American struggles from the generic term “Oriental”. America Is in the Heart speaks to this struggle to retain one's identity in a new world. The graphic and gritty description of the Filipino town Bibalonan shocked the readers into realizing its distinction. It is a “damned town” where women are stoned to death and babies are left unwanted by the wayside. King-Kok Cheung believes that Bulosan is so celebrated due to a lack of attention to Filipino American writers “whose exilic writings did not fit with the immigrant ethos” of America. One of Bulosan's most important themes as a writer was the importance to find one's identity in America. Bulosan reveals his faith and love for America in the end of America Is in the Heart. This sentiment is repeated in an essay entitled Be American, where Bulosan described American citizenship as a “most cherished dream”. Even if his writing did seem more conducive to the accepted image of immigrants, Bulosan opened the door for later writers to push the envelope of acceptance. Filipino-American writers of more recent years, such as Ninotchka Rosca and Linda Ty-Casper, have continued to highlight the complexity of a totally unified Filipino-American identity.

See also

  • I Walked with Heroes, an autobiography by Carlos P. Romulo
  • Claro Candelario

References

  • Tolentino, Cynthia. In the "Training Center of the Skillful Servants of Mankind": Carlos Bulosan's Professional Filipinos in an Age of Benevolent Supremacy at americanliterature.dukejournals.org
  • Video of "America Is in the Heart for the 21st Century", a symposium about Carlos Bulosan, The Asian Division of the Library of Congress at www.loc.gov