America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

by Carlos Bulosan, Marilyn C. Alquizola (Introduction), Lane Ryo Hirabayashi (Introduction)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780295805016
Publisher:	University of Washington Press
Publication date:	04/01/2014
Series:	Classics of Asian American Literature
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	916,835
File size:	985 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Carlos Bulosan(1913 - 1956) was an English-language Filipino novelist and poet. Born in the Philippines, he immigrated to the United States at age seventeen and worked as a farmworker, dishwasher, and ultimately, as a labor organizer in both Washington and California.

What People are Saying About This

Greg Castilla

The premier text of the Filipino-American experience.

Carlos Bulosan

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.

Editorial Reviews

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.

Pacific Northwest Quarterly - Greg Lewis

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.

New York Times - Carlos P. Romulo

"To resist the call to heartlessness, let’s heed the call to idealism expressed by Bulosan in America Is in the Heart."

Seattle Times - Tyron Beason

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

"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

From the Publisher