America is in the Heart
Carlos Bulosan
When I first read the title of the book and the author, I was
excited from that split second because I thought I was finally going to
read a book about immigration. The book gave me the feeling that it
was going to deal with Mexican immigrants. Yet, I was completely
wrong it was about immigration but it only dealt with Filipinos. I’m not
going to lie I was some what discouraged, but the truth was that I did
not know much about Filipino immigrants and their stories. The
surprising fact was that one mans story changed my way of thinking
towards Filipino immigrants.
The whole book describes the troubled migration of a man by
the name of Carlos Bulosan. He describes his horrific life in the
Philippines as a young child living with his family, and goes on
detailing the events that crossed his path as he is growing up. Such
as migrating to the U.S, trying to make a living in the states and his
final thought on the U.S and how it helped him create a better life for
himself.
Carlos was born on November 24, 1913. He was born and
raised in Binalonan Pangasinan which is located in the central
Philippines. He lived there with his peasant family in a little village
named Boyhood. He was the youngest one of four brothers and a
sister, who unfortunately died at a young age from unknown causes.
Out off the four brothers only one of them actually extended his
studies. The reason being that the family did not have enough money
to send them all. Carlos’s poor family had to pay his brother’s
education by selling all their land. It got to the point where the family
had no land left and no money to send. It was Carlos responsibility to
help his father with his older brother out in the field taking care of the
animals and picking corn. The older he grew the more horrific events
he witnessed. Such as the whipping of his father, oldest brother, and
his brothers wife.
He finally thought it was enough on July 22, 1930, which is
when he arrived to the U.S. his first destination being Seattle. He was
seventeen year old with only three years of schooling, speaking
broken English, and only twelve cents in his pocket. Carlos eventually
migrated through out the rest of the sates and ended in California. He
never became a US citizen and never went back to the Philippines.
Carlos was never able to get high paying jobs since his health did not
allow it. He was able to get small dishwashing jobs and eventually
worked the fields. Carlos always limped do to the fact that he suffered
an accident catching a freight train out of Bakersfield. In 1936 Carlos
was taken to the hospital and obtained three operations for a
punctured right lung. He spent two years in the hospital and was
finally able to leave in 1938 with no ribs on his right side.
When Carlos arrived to the states so did thousands of other
Filipinos. Yet most of them viewed being Filipino as a crime. They felt
as if they were running a crime they did not commit and that crime
was being a Filipino in the US. Most if not all of the Filipino
immigrants came to the US because of the great “attraction of ideals.”
This book does a great job of reflecting the lives of thousands of
Filipino immigrants who came to the US seeking a promise of a better
life. The book is a social classic between rich and poor and of course
the difference in race, as well as describing the American experience
and the danger that many Filipinos faced as they were forced to
forget their roots.
The book touches a period from 1930-1940. This time was
when the most Filipinos migrated to America, in 1920 there were
about 5,603 Filipinos in the US. Most of them were students or what
were known as “fountain boys” which were Filipinos who chose to
stay in the US after enlisting in the Navy as “message boys.” As 1907
came there was a new agreement called the Gentlemen’s
agreement. Which allowed Filipinos to work the sugar fields in Hawaii
which meant that Filipino numbers increased to 100,000 from 1907-
1926. By 1924 Hawaii barred Japanese migration and threatened
Mexican labor, that added more Filipino numbers to about 45,000 in
all there were 150,000 Filipinos in the US. 52,810 were found in
Hawaii and 45,263 in the states, most of them eventually landed in
California. Most of the immigrants were young, unmarried men with
little or no education and very few working skills. We tend to view all
Filipinos as immigrants yet most did not have an interest in becoming
citizens or residents. They tended to stay for a period of time to work
and travel back to the Philippines. While in the US most wereexploited by Chinese or Japanese of higher social class and made the Filipinos feel unwelcomed overall.
Carlos Bulosan truly makes the reader feel the pain and suffering that many Filipinos felt while in the US. The thougt of being exploited by other races, or feeling like a criminal just because of your race. Carlos explains the true meaning of America and those who make up America. He mentions how “ America is the illiterate immigrant who is ashamed that the world of books and intellectual opportunities is closed to him. We are that entire nameless foreigner, that homeless refugee, and that hungry boy, that illiterate immigrant and that lynched black body. All of us, from the first Adams to the last Filipino, native born or alien, educated or illiterate- We are America
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