"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."
America Is in the Heart: A Personal History
Narrated by Ramón de Ocampo
Carlos BulosanUnabridged — 13 hours, 26 minutes
America Is in the Heart: A Personal History
Narrated by Ramón de Ocampo
Carlos BulosanUnabridged — 13 hours, 26 minutes
Audiobook (Digital)
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Overview
A 1946 Filipino American social classic about the United States in the 1930s from the perspective of a Filipino migrant laborer who endures racial violence and struggles with the paradox of the American dream, with a foreword by novelist Elaine Castillo
Poet, essayist, novelist, fiction writer, and labor organizer, Carlos Bulosan (1911-1956) wrote one of the most influential working class literary classics about the US pre-World War II, a period and setting similar to that of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row. Bulosan's semi-autobiographical novel America Is in the Heart begins with the narrator's rural childhood in the Philippines and the struggles of land-poor peasant families affected by US imperialism after the Spanish American War of the late 1890s.
Carlos' experiences with other Filipino migrant laborers, who endured intense racial abuse in the fields, orchards, towns, cities, and canneries of California and the Pacific Northwest in the 1930s, reexamine the ideals of the American dream. Bulosan was one of the most important twentieth-century social critics with his deeply moving account of what it was like to be criminalized in the US as a Filipino migrant drawn to the ideals of what America symbolized and committed to social justice for all marginalized groups.
Editorial Reviews
"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."
"To resist the call to heartlessness, let’s heed the call to idealism expressed by Bulosan in America Is in the Heart."
People interested in driving from America the scourge of intolerance should read Mr. Bulosan's autobiography. They should read it that they may draw from the anger it will arouse in them the determination to bring to an end the vicious nonsense of racism.
"People interested in driving from America the scourge of intolerance should read Mr. Bulosan's autobiography. They should read it that they may draw from the anger it will arouse in them the determination to bring to an end the vicious nonsense of racism."Saturday Review of Literature
"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
Product Details
BN ID: | 2940169524741 |
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Publisher: | Blackstone Audio, Inc. |
Publication date: | 06/18/2019 |
Edition description: | Unabridged |
Sales rank: | 1,086,376 |