America Is in the Heart: A Personal History (Classics of Asian American Literature) Paperback – February 21, 2014
by Carlos Bulosan (Author), & 2 more
4.6 out of 5 stars 235 ratings
First published in 1943, this classic memoir by well-known Filipino poet Carlos Bulosan describes his boyhood in the Philippines, his voyage to America, and his years of hardship and despair as an itinerant laborer following the harvest trail in the rural West.
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327 pages
Editorial Reviews
Review
"America came to him in a public ward in the Los Angeles County Hospital while around him men died gasping for their last bit of air, and he learned that while America could be cruel it could also be immeasurably kind. . . . For Carlos Bulosan no lifetime could be long enough in which to explain to America that no man could destroy his faith in it again. He wanted to contribute something toward the final fulfillment of America. So he wrote this book that holds the bitterness of his own blood."―Carlos P. Romulo, New York Times
"Bulosan's gripping memoir-novel of a young Filipino immigrant long ago secured its place in Asian American literature. . . . An outstanding introductory essay extends the historical discussion (and in some ways brings it full circle) in this third edition. . . . [Bulosan's] call to action resonates with the same urgency today as it did seven decades ago."―Greg Lewis, Pacific Northwest Quarterly
"To resist the call to heartlessness, let's heed the call to idealism expressed by Bulosan in America Is in the Heart."―Tyron Beason, Seattle Times
"The premier text of the Filipino-American experience."―Greg Castilla
Review
"America came to him in a public ward in the Los Angeles County Hospital while around him men died gasping for their last bit of air, and he learned that while America could be cruel it could also be immeasurably kind. . . . For Carlos Bulosan no lifetime could be long enough in which to explain to America that no man could destroy his faith in it again. He wanted to contribute something toward the final fulfillment of America. So he wrote this book that holds the bitterness of his own blood."―Carlos P. Romulo, New York Times
"Bulosan's gripping memoir-novel of a young Filipino immigrant long ago secured its place in Asian American literature. . . . An outstanding introductory essay extends the historical discussion (and in some ways brings it full circle) in this third edition. . . . [Bulosan's] call to action resonates with the same urgency today as it did seven decades ago."―Greg Lewis, Pacific Northwest Quarterly
"To resist the call to heartlessness, let's heed the call to idealism expressed by Bulosan in America Is in the Heart."―Tyron Beason, Seattle Times
Book Description
"It was a crime to be a Filipino in California. . . . The public streets were not free to my people: we were stopped each time these vigilant patrolmen saw us driving a car. We were suspect each time we were seen with a white woman. And perhaps it was this narrowing of our life into an island, into a filthy segment of American society that had driven Filipinos . . . inward, hating everyone and despising all positive urgencies toward freedom."
-- Carlos Bulosan
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Product details
Publisher : University of Washington Press; revised edition (February 21, 2014)
Language : English
Paperback : 327 pages
ISBN-10 : 0295993537
ISBN-13 : 978-0295993539
Reading age : 18 years and up
Lexile measure : 850L
Item Weight : 15.2 ounces
Dimensions : 8.5 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #53,380 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#21 in Asian American Studies (Books)
#195 in Asian American Literature & Fiction
#308 in Biographical Historical Fiction
Customer Reviews: 4.6 out of 5 stars 235 ratings
From the United States
JustinHoca
5.0 out of 5 stars Definitely a classic. A must-read for any American who has ever lived/worked in the Philippines
Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2021
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America is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan
"They've all come to look for America..." -- Simon and Garfunkel's lyric from "America" was the constant soundtrack in my mind as I read this book. Few books are written by those in extreme poverty, much less by immigrants for whom English is a new language. While Steinbeck captured The Depression in The Grapes of Wrath, Bulosan actually experienced it firsthand, and barely survives to tell the tale. As an immigrant, he has the unique vantage of experiencing the intense poverty and racism in America as still preferable to the unending poverty of his family's tenant-farming community in Binolonan, Pangasinan, Philippines. “You shouldn’t have come to America. But you can’t go back now. You can never go back, Allos.”
This work was published in 1946, on the eve of Philippines' independence. Much like reading various histories of America's (only) colonial project in the Philippines, Bulosan's depiction of stowing away in railroad boxcars looking for the next opportunity, the next meal, or escaping the last brutality, I find that this story is of an America forgotten, and hardly known, and deeply relevant in a year (2020) when both civil rights, police reform, and socialist movements are back in the forefront of activism. While many details may be fictionalized, or names and places altered or obscured, it is still autobiographical and quite vivid. Very few people from the depths publish a book their experiences, much less an immigrant in times when the U.S. Congress, and California, specifically passed laws limiting what Asian immigrants could do or own. Americans today are aware of the Japanese being interned in World War II, fewer are aware of laws that excluded Japanese from owning lands, from Asians holding office, or even marrying white U.S. citizens. This is part of what gives the book such great value.
"I came to know afterward that in many ways it was a crime to be a Filipino in California. I came to know that the public streets were not free to my people: we were stopped each time these vigilant patrolmen saw us driving a car. We were suspect each time we were seen with a white woman. And perhaps it was this narrowing of our life into an island, into a filthy segment of American society, that had driven Filipinos like Doro inward, hating everyone and despising all positive urgencies toward freedom."
Bulosan's story is one of repeated survival, maintaining a love of life, and finding one's purpose. Carlos Bulosan was an Ilocano raised in Binalonan in Pangasinan. The tragedies his family experience there is a great window into village life in the Philippines even today. Wealthy, politically-connected landowners who live in Manila make decisions that ruin the lives of those sharecropping the estates. Bulosan watches as his father sells the only bits of land he owns in order to send one son to school. He details the tragedies of livelihoods lost after one bad flood wipes out the rice crop, or when illiterate farmers get cheated in contracts they don't understand.
"Some of my uncles were already dispossessed of their lands, so they went to the provincial government and fought for justice; but they came back to the village puzzled and defeated. It was then that one of my uncles resorted to violence and died violently, and another entered a world of crime and criminals. But my father believed in the eternal goodness of man...The peasants did not know to whom they should present their grievances or whom to fight when the cancer of exploitation became intolerable. They became cynical about the national government and the few powerful Filipinos of foreign extraction who were squeezing a fat livelihood out of it."
Bulosan sells wares with his mother in neighboring villages, or breaks his leg climbing trees to cut coconuts, scrapping to put food on the table and continue his brother's education, in the hopes that he will make it out. He lists no dates in the book, so one has to guess at the years based on the events as he observes them as a child. He had a brother who fought in World War I, others who trained with the Philippines Scouts, and is vaguely aware of political movements in the gradual transition from U.S. colony to U.S. commonwealth toward full independence. In these hardships, Filipinos rely on their large families, and the love and sacrifice is evident. After immigrating to the USA, Bulosan repeatedly reconnects with his brothers in various (often criminal) circumstances, initially making personal sacrifices for them, and watching them do the same for him later. It's a beautiful picture of family and love, while also a tragic picture-- they can never go home again.
"I wanted to cry because my brother was no longer the person I had known in Binalonan. He was no longer the gentle, hard-working janitor in the presidencia. I remembered the time when he had gone to Lingayen to cook for my brother Macario! Now he had changed, and I could not understand him any more. “Please, God, don’t change me in America!” I said to myself, looking the other way so that I would not cry."
The author's journey in America begins with the typical storybook optimism--surely life will be better here. Bulosan quickly experiences Alaskan commercial fishing, canning factories in Washington, and various fruit picking and restaurant kitchen jobs from California to Idaho, while also becoming a successful gambler. He witnesses seasoned migrants exploiting newcomers, different Asian nationalities competing with and exploiting one another, legislated discrimination, and abject police brutality that essentially cripples him for life.
"In San Diego, where I tried to get a job, I was beaten upon several occasions by restaurant and hotel proprietors. I put the blame on certain Filipinos who had behaved badly in America, who had instigated hate."
“Listen to the brown monkey talk,” said one of the detectives, slapping Alonzo in the face. “He thinks he has the right to be educated. Listen to the bastard talk English. He thinks he is a white man. How do you make this white woman stick with you, googoo? The divorcée was driven out of town, warned never to see Filipinos again."
"It was then a simple thing for the state legislature to pass a law forbidding marriage between members of the Malayan and Caucasian races. This action was followed by neighboring states until, when the war with Japan broke out in 1941, New Mexico was the nearest place to the Pacific Coast where Filipino soldiers could marry Caucasian women."
"I knew that our decadence was imposed by a society alien to our character and inclination, alien to our heritage and history. It took me a long time, then, to erase the outward scars of these years, but the deep, invisible scars inside me are not wholly healed and forgotten."
Despite it all, Bulosan develops friendships with Americans who are also critical of the injustices they see. His strong desire to live propels him forward with the hope that things can and will be better. He is always struck by the two Americas he is always facing-- kindness and opportunity with cruelty and discrimination. Amazingly, Bulosan maintains his faith in the idea of America:
"And yet in this hospital, among white people—Americans like those who had denied us—we had found refuge and tolerance. Why was America so kind and yet so cruel? Was there no way to simplifying things in this continent so that suffering would be minimized? Was there no common denominator on which we could all meet? I was angry and confused, and wondered if I would ever understand this paradox."
"(T)he American earth was like a huge heart unfolding warmly to receive me. I felt it spreading through my being, warming me with its glowing reality. It came to me that no man—no one at all—could destroy my faith in America again. It was something that had grown out of my defeats and successes, something shaped by my struggles for a place in this vast land, digging my hands into the rich soil here and there, catching a freight to the north and to the south, seeking free meals in dingy gambling houses, reading a book that opened up worlds of heroic thoughts. It was something that grew out of the sacrifices and loneliness of my friends, of my brothers in America and my family in the Philippines—something that grew out of our desire to know America, and to become a part of her great tradition, and to contribute something toward her final fulfillment. I knew that no man could destroy my faith in America that had sprung from all our hopes and aspirations, ever."
I bought this book after Amazon kept recommending it to me, especially after I bought Gina Apostol's Insurrecto. I've worked in the Philippines and studied its history, particular its American period, pretty closely (see my other reviews) but I had never heard of this book, much less was I aware there was a Penguin Classic by a Filipino author. A poll of my university-educated Filipino friends found only one had read it--and she owns a bookshop that specializes in Filipino literature (she said "Bulosan is canon.") Apparently this book was "rediscovered" in the 1970s and made popular again. I recommend skipping the Introduction, a lengthy dissertation by a modern Bulosan scholar, until after completing the book. I highly recommend this book to Americans working in the Philippines for a perspective they will not otherwise have on rural poverty, the real problem of land ownership and corruption, the unique desperation of Filipinos trying to immigrate to the United States, and the breadth and trials of the Filipino immigrant diaspora.
Unsurprisingly, recently unclassified files show that Bulosan's associations and writings drew the interest of the FBI as a Communist agitator. The book gives insight into the labor organization movements of migrant agricultural workers in the 1930s, and Bulosan indeed befriends many Leftist Communists, intensely interested in the fight in Europe against fascism and at least one of whom returned to Russia.
It is difficult to keep in mind that Bulosan was illiterate for much of his life and was unable to record his thoughts in English until much later. Unable to attend school, he essentially becomes self-taught and it was befriending those in the literary diaspora while dealing with a long hospital stay for tuberculosis that he becomes a voracious reader. This also connected him to other Asian immigrant authors, and Bulosan lists several authors and works that I might check out later. Bulosan starts to have a desire to record the folk tales and other stories from the Philippines, as he realizes much of their literature is lost or unrecorded. His mind also sets to civil rights activism both for working class migrants, but always with a desire to return to help Filipinos in their own homeland.
"(I)f, at the end of my career, I could arrive at a positive understanding of America, then I could go back to the Philippines with a torch of enlightenment. And perhaps, if given a chance, I could help liberate the peasantry from ignorance and poverty...I think this is really the meaning of life: the extension of little things into the future so that they might be useful to other people.”
Five stars.
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Dr. William C. Ayers
5.0 out of 5 stars An Essential Book for These Times on the Border
Reviewed in the United States on July 31, 2019
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Just finished “America is in the Heart,” a memoir by the Filipino poet Carlos Bulosan, first published in 1946 and reissued this year by the University of Washington Press in a new series called Classics of Asian American Literature. It’s a harrowing read, the story of a peasant boy in the Philippines, dirt poor and on the verge of starvation, who musters all his strength and courage and resourcefulness to find his way to the fields, canneries, and fisheries of the West Coast of the US. There his dreams of freedom crash into the hard realities of discrimination, racism, exploitation, cruelty, and violence. He sees it all—the casual brutality of the cops, the hatred of the vigilantes, the thievery of the bosses, the angry mob chanting, “Why don’t they ship those monkeys back where they came from,” but also the generosity of an emergency room nurse and doctor, the kindness of several chance encounters, and the support of fellow artists. He and his brothers become labor organizers and join the Young Communist League. His experiences—brutal and raw—are an essential part of the complex narrative that is our country. Bulosan persists, certain that the America of his dreams—a place where people take care of one another and cooperate to build a world based on love and respect and justice—is still possible. This story is part of his attempt to make it so.
Woody Guthrie:
The crops are all in and the peaches are rotting
The oranges are piled in their creosote dumps
They're flying you back to the Mexico border
To pay all your money to wade back again.
My father's own father, he waded that river
They took all the money he made in his life
My brothers and sisters come working the fruit trees
And they rode the truck till they broke down and died.
Good-bye to my Juan, good-bye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big air-plane
And all they will call you will be deportees.
Some of us are illegal, and others not wanted
Our work contract's out and we have to move on
But it's six hundred miles to that Mexican border
They chase us like outlaws, like rustlers, like thieves.
We died in your hills, we died in your deserts
We died in your valleys and died on your plains
We died 'neath your trees and we died in your bushes
Both sides of the river, we died just the same.
Good-bye to my Juan, good-bye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big air-plane
And all they will call you will be deportees.
A sky plane caught fire over Los Gatos canyon
Like a fireball of lightning, it shook all our hills
Who are all these friends, all scattered like dry leaves?
The radio says they are just deportees.
Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?
Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?
To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil
And be called by no name except deportees?
Good-bye to my Juan, good-bye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus y Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big air-plane
And all they will call you will be deportees.
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Party Angel
4.0 out of 5 stars An Important Read
Reviewed in the United States on December 25, 2017
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An important read for Filipino-Americans (especially recent immigrants), for anyone who wants to truly understand the state of the nation during the Great Depression, and for anyone interested in the history of civil rights.
As a Filipino-American (recently naturalized), even though I have lived in the US for about 17 years, I was completely unaware of this aspect of our history as Filipinos and Filipino-Americans. I was spurred into reading this by my curiosity about a grand-uncle who, as it turns, out came to the US at the same time under similar circumstances, and likely experienced many of the same things described here.
I came to appreciate how lucky I am living at this time in history while realizing that I could have been him or others like him if I had come here just decades earlier. People like them, in their ceaseless struggle, paved the way for minorities like me, to enjoy certain rights and privileges that they could never have enjoyed. It makes one appreciate the arc of history as well as the fragility things.
There are some stylistic shortcomings, in my opinion, but when one realizes the circumstances under which Bulosan has written his vast body of works or received his writer's education, one can only marvel at this talented outlier.
Also, his poetry is fantastic. I've read those that appeared in Poetry magazine. It may be better than his prose.
I'm bothered by the fact that some say this is a 'memoir' and others a 'novel,' even in the same book (the edition I read had both in the description). I know though of authors who have written books on the history of Asian immigration who consider this to be a memoir. If anyone can cite reasons or evidence for either side, I'm all ears. It seems to me to be creative nonfiction, but that is just my opinion.
All in all, it is a valuable reference on the life of Asian immigrants, especially Filipinos, at the time from the perspective and first-hand experiences of someone who lived it.
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Juan
5.0 out of 5 stars Overcoming obstacles against all odd.
Reviewed in the United States on February 2, 2020
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I first heard of this book last year during an NPR podcast and it grabbed my interest so deep that I knew I had to read it. The book is broken into 4 sections in which the Author, Carlos (Allos as he is called by his family in the Philippines) Bulosan writes about his early childhood in the Philippines and the poverty he and his family faced; migrating to the U.S., and the racism he encountered throughout the country while all he wanted to do was work and make a living; finding his love for reading and being able to put his own personal journey and struggles of other migrants on paper; and finally to his involvement with the movement for better wages and treatment of migrant workers by the U.S.. Bulosan died very young from Tuberculosis and complications from living in miserable conditions since the day he arrived to the US. Such a great book that is filled with sadness, joy, accomplishment, and most of all resiliency. .
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From America is in the heart (1943) by Carlos Bulosan: "It is but fair to say that America is not a land of one race or one class of men. We are all Americans that have toiled and suffered and known oppression and defeat. America is not bound by geographical latitutdes. America is not merely a land or an institution. America is in the hearts of men that died for freedom; it is also in the eyes of men that are building a new world. America is a prophecy of a new society of men; of a system that knows no sorrow or strife or suffering. America is a warning to those who would try to falsify the ideals of freemen.
America is also the nameless foreigner, the homeless refugee, the hungry boy begging for a job, and the black body dangling from a tree. America is the illiterate immigrant who is ashamed that the world of books and intellectual opportunities are closed to him. We are all that nameless foreigner, that homeless refugee, that hungry boy, that illiterate immigrant, and that lynched black body. All of us, from the first Adam to the last Filipino, native born or alien, educated or illiterate - We are America!"
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Em Bennett
1.0 out of 5 stars Missing 30 Pages
Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2020
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Interesting book that I cannot finish because the copy I received was a misprint missing thirty pages. Be careful of buying editions with this cover.
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Malati Shinazy
5.0 out of 5 stars This book was so riveting and poignant, I refused ...
Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2017
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This book was so riveting and poignant, I refused to stop reading it, despite its length and sheer weight. While I usually pack lightly for business travel, other items came out of my carry-on luggage to make room for America is in the Heart.
The book truly pulled me in to Mr. Bulosan's life, and the lives of other Pinoy migrant farm workers and organizers, a group few of us know anything about.
Read it and then share it with someone else! -- Malati Marlene Shinazy, MEd
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David Wade
3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting as history
Reviewed in the United States on June 4, 2019
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I read this for a college class. I was going to give it just one star because the writing is not that great, but his documentation of immigrant life in the 1930's makes it a good anthropological/historical document. The life immigrants were subjected to during this time was harsh. Sometimes it was brutal. But, Carlos Bulosan never seems to have lost his hope that the world would turn out to be a good place.
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Neil modino
5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful story about Filipino immigrants
Reviewed in the United States on September 19, 2020
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It was a great story about the lives of the Filipinos in America. It's an eye opening about the struggles and oppression that Filipinos have endured in America. It's a fight for equality and a fight to assimilate and experience the American dream. It is a must read for readers who wants to understand and know the history of Filipino immigrants in America.
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SIPIN
5.0 out of 5 stars WONDERFUL READING
Reviewed in the United States on May 12, 2017
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The only thing missing in this wonderful book are photos.
These pdople have a little known history due to there ammount of people who came to the USA. But they had a big inpact in our history, why has there not been much about them? Wonderful reading!!!
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Nancy Luna
5.0 out of 5 stars Required Reading for Filipino- Americans.
Reviewed in the United States on November 17, 2017
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History of Filipinos in America- before & after WWII. I had no idea that this author was involved in the birth of labor unions. Our country has a lot to be grateful for because of the hardships him and his colleagues had endured.
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