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World Hotels - America Is in the Heart: A Personal History (Washington Paperbacks, Wp-68)
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List Price: $14.95
Our Price: $10.17
Your Save: $ 4.78 ( 32% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: University of Washington Press
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 818.5209
EAN: 9780295952895
ISBN: 029595289X
Label: University of Washington Press
Manufacturer: University of Washington Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 327
Publication Date: 1974-06
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Studio: University of Washington Press
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Editorial Reviews:
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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 those terrible events.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Thank you
Comment: This book shed some light to me. Mr. Bulosan's story is something I would dearly encourage Filipinos to read and identify their roots.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Starts off Great and Tails off...
Comment: The story starts off written really well, and in some parts it seems redundant and rushed with alot of sentences starting off with I. i.e.
i went to the market. i saw some white men beat a filipino guy up. i didn't like what they were doing.
the stories he tells of his family in the beginning of the book are very heart breaking, but after many several chapters it gets redundant. every turn he makes is a bad one and he always ends up in a bad place. i just wondered if the book was worth finishing, and to me it isn't. it starts getting political at the end about unions and labor movements.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A beautifully-told tale of tragedy....
Comment: I first read AMERICA IS IN THE HEART as a young teenager in high school. Writer Carlos Bulosan goes the semi-autobiographical route to re-examine some of the most painful memories of his life, starting as a youth in the Philippines up to his last days on the West Coast of the United States. Carlos Bulosan, born on November 24, 1913 in Pangasinan, Philippines, came from a very poor background. His family had no choice but to work, collectively, while he and his siblings toiled in the fields of Pangasinan, and abroad in the United States, just so they could [barely] subsist on their earnings and scrap by.
The main character, Allos, must relocate to the United States, to find work in various odd jobs (including the canneries of California and Washington state). He is faced with racism from all sides--Caucasians, exploitative Chinese and Japanese bosses, and just about everyone else. The darker your skin, the harder the discrimination fell on workers of the 1930s and 1940s. This came with strict laws again miscygenation. If you were Filipino, just speaking to a White woman could get you in a lot of hot water. Yet, in the face of all of this pain, Allos becomes involved as a labor organizer and demonstrator for the rights of exploited laborers. What's more, he meets and is reunited with friends and family, over the course of the story, and even finds friendship with a Caucasian woman, Mary.
AMERICA IS IN THE HEART beautifully recounts the pain that faced countless laborers who arrived in the United States to bring in income for their families, in their countries. Many of the passages read like poetry, yet remain very accessable to people for whom the concept of the plight of migrant workers is a fairly foreign concept. Great reading.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Voice to FilAms
Comment: I first read this book for a Filipino History class at UCLA in 1991. I read it again this year and have appreciated it more. Age and the fact that I re-read it for pleasure this time around can make a difference.... Though I do miss the book discussion at UCLA.
What I love about "America is in the Heart" is that the book gives voice to Filipino Americans, particularly to the forgotten ones from the early part of last century. Just like the Filipino American War, only a few knows about this chapter of American History. The struggles and successes of this group of Filipino men should be heard and this book gives good account of their experiences.
Customer Rating:
Summary: My own thoughts/reflections on America...
Comment: This book tells the story of Allos (or Carlos) Bulosan - from his early days as a peasant child in the Phillipines to his days as an itinerant laborer and reformer for the Filipinos in America. This autobiography reflects the hard life of a persecuted nationality. With no rights to own agricultural land and the risks of being beaten for even conversing with a white women, Filipinos were despised along the West Coast and treated as criminals and monkeys. With no legal recourse or organizations, Filipino workers were often exploited by the contractors and the Chinese and Japanese who owned the gambling houses and whorehouses. This exploitation led many to drinking and violence, only to aggravate the hatred of their kind. Bulosan tells of the brutalities endured by Filipinos at the hands of the white community and of the terrors of disease and unemployment. How many times did Bulosan have to hear "You're fired!" after trying to stand up for himself and his people.
One thing that struck me about the book was the concept of meeting your siblings when you're old enough to remember it. Having grown up with my older sister always at my side, the first scene in which he firsts meets his older brother, Leon seemed very foreign to me. It brought home the point that working families didn't always have the luxury of living together. To survive, each family member had to contribute whether it was working the fields or selling goods in the market, but it meant that the whole family was not united. This family never seemed to be fully together, at least one sibling or parent was always away, trying to do their part. It was hard for me to really relate to that, although I certainly felt for them.
Another concept that I noticed was the sense of time in the book. While Carlos was in America, I never really grasped how much time was passing, and it seemed that Carlos himself didn't either. When reflecting, he often wondered at how many years it had been since he arrived in Seattle. Even after reading the book, I'm not sure exactly of the years that this autobiography covers, although I'm given a few references to historical events and figures. While years seemed to be pass by unnoticed, Carlos writes of an "acute sense of time" because he has to focus on the present just to survive. He writes, "yesterday seemed long ago and tomorrow was too far away. It was today that I lived for aimless, this hour - this moment." That to me was an interesting contrast.
Carlos also wrote of the conflicting visions of America - how it could be so cruel at times, while certain aspects could be so kind. He could not understand the country that terrorized his people, and yet contained some people so willing to help. The violence and pain Carlos experienced made him fear even himself - that he would not be able to contain his rage and would last out. He was afraid of his own brutality, even when he longed for goodness and love in the country of opportunity.
This book is filled with names and places, and it is often difficult to remember exactly who's who or what happened in which city. As Carlos travels all along the West Coast and meets a great many people. Surprisingly to me, his world seems small, as he meets most of his friends and companions multiple times during his travels. Seemingly by chance, he encounters his brothers who came to America before him. Maybe it was vastly different then, but I have a hard time imagining that continuous traveling on the coast would lead you to your family and friends as often as it did for Carlos. However, since the Filipinos were confined to certain districts, I guess it shouldn't be so surprising.
The last parts of the book relate Carlos' experience in trying to organize the Filipino labor movement, and his intellectual emergence as a writer. Throughout this section, Carlos regains his faith in America, as he meets more people fighting for his people and reads dozens of books proving that situations can get better and uneducated people can write the story of their people and their struggles. America became a part of Carlos - through it's land and his struggles and successes in it. He wanted desperately to help America grow into the country he knew it could be, and he sacrificed so much for America. His hopes were contained within America, and so America was contained within him.
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