America is in the Heart (Notes)

AMERICA IS IN THE HEART. First published in 1946, this autobiography of the well known Filipino poet 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. Bulosan does not spare the reader any of the horrors that accompanied the migrant's life; but his quiet, stoic voice is the most convincing witness to the terrible events he witnessed. CARLOS BULOSAN Carlos Bulosan was a prolific writer and poet, best remembered as the author of America Is in the Heart, a landmark semi-autobiographical story about the Filipino immigrant experience. Bulosan gained recognition in mainstream American society with the 1944 publication of Laughter of my Father, which was excerpted in the New Yorker, Harper’s Bazaar, and Town and Country. He immigrated to America from the Philippines in 1930, endured horrendous conditions as a laborer, became active in the labor movement, and was blacklisted along with other labor radicals during the 1950s. He spent his last years in Seattle, jobless, penniless, and in poor health. According to his baptismal records, Bulosan was born in Pangasinan Province in the Philippine Islands on November 2, 1911. But other sources give Bulosan’s birth date three to four years later. This is just one example of conflicting versions of his younger years in a peasant family with three brothers and two sisters. The family farm was sold, hectare by hectare, to pay for boat fare for his older brothers’ passages to the United States. SETTING Since the story is a semi-autobiography of the author, the events happened in different places and in different times in his life. The novel was set in the pre-world war 2 era, from Carlo’s childhood to the 1940s. The places mentioned in the story are: POINT OF VIEW The book is an autobiography, written in the first person. The reader views everything through Carlos' eyes and sees everything from his perspective. This allows the reader to understand Carlos better, and to understand what he experienced. When the book opens at the farm in the barrio, the reader sees a five year old trying to find out if the man approaching them is his brother, a brother he has only seen pictures of and has never met. The reader watches as Carlos becomes aware of his mother and her living conditions when he sees her admiring the fancy clothing of the middle class, knowing that she and her children will never have anything like that. THEME Conditions in the rural Philippines are harsh for the peasants. There is hardship, exploitation and subsistence existence. The peasant children have no childhood because they are working in the fields or in the market or home with the parents at an early age. The boys leave their parents' home in their early teens to find work and a better life, trying to escape the harsh and hopeless environment. Their families know and expect this. Carlos' mother tells him several times that he can go and that they are poor. They go from menial job to menial job trying to eke out a living. The parents can't give them a better life in a subsistence farming environment and the parents and children know this. Bulosan's America Is in the Heart is one of the few books that detail the migrant workers' struggles in the United States during the 1930s through the 1940s, a time when signs like "Dogs and Filipinos not allowed" were common. The struggles included "beatings, threats, and ill health".