America Is In The Heart

Description

Author: Carlos Bulosan

Introduction by: Carey McWilliams

First published in 1946, this classic semi-autobiographical novel of the well-known Filipino poet Carlos Bulosan describes the writer’s 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 of the US. 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 lived through.

“America came to him in a public ward in 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 in the New York Times