Two Faces of America

By: Carlos Bulosan

Background of the Story
1. America is in the Heart is a semiautobiographical novel with strong ties to the
Authors’ Experience
2. It is well remembered because for its insight on the immigrant Experienced 3. After 1946, it is
republished by The University of Washington Press in 1973. 4. It was described by one character in the
book's original draft as "30% autobiography 40%case history of Filipino (Filipino immigrant) life in
America, and 30% fiction.
Message: 1.Equality among diversity. 2. It encourages people of all races and genders to ponder and
improve their relationships with one another 3. Despite of the suffering and abuses, everyone must
invest time and energy with a feeling of hope for the future instead of bitterness to such uncertainties.
Themes: It talks about the migrant workers' struggles in the United States during the 1930s through the
1940s.
“Fighting for Equality” is the premise of the story. The author narrated the establishment of labor union
eradicating racial discriminations.
Characters
• Medi
• Nieri
• Don
• Corasoy
• Labayo

Plot
Born in 1913,Bulosan recounts his boyhood in the Philippines. The early chapters describe his life as a
Filipino farmer "plowing with a carabao". Bulosan was the fourth oldest son of the family. As a young
Filipino, he once lived in the farm tended by his father, while his mother was separately living in a barrio
in Binalonan, Pangasinan, together with Bulosan’s brother and sister. Their hardship included pawning
their land and had to sell items in order to finish the schooling of his brother Macario.[He had another
brother named Leon, a soldier who came back after fighting in Europe.
Bulosan's narration about his life in the Philippines was followed by his journey to the United States. He
recounted how he immigrated to America in 1930.[2] He retells the struggles, prejudice, and injustice he
and other Filipinos had endured in the United States, first while in the Northwestern fisheries then later
in California. These included his experiences as a migrant and laborer in the rural West.

Themes
Bulosan's America Is in the Heart is one of the few books that detail the migrant workers' struggles in
the United States during the 1930s through the 1940s, a time when signs like "Dogs and Filipinos not
allowed" were common. The struggles included "beatings, threats, and ill health". In this book, Bulosan
also narrated his attempts to establish a labor union. Bulosan's book had been compared to The Grapes
of Wrath except that the main and real characters were brown-skinned. Despite the bitterness however,
Bulosan revealed at the final pages of the book that because he loved America no one could ever
destroy his faith in his new country. In this personal literature, Bulosan argued that despite of the
suffering and abuses he experienced America was an unfinished “ideal in which everyone must invest
time and energy, this outlook leaves us with a feeling of hope for the future instead of bitter defeat.”
According to Carlos P. Romulo when he was interviewed by The New York Times, Bulosan wrote America
Is in the Heart with “bitterness” in his heart and blood yet with the purpose of contributing “something
toward the final fulfillment of America”.
Message
America Is in the Heart serves as a piece of activist literature. It sheds light on the racial and class issues
that affected Filipino immigrants throughout the beginning of the twentieth century. The autobiography
attempts to show Filipino Americans the structure of American society and the oppression inflicted
upon Filipino’s living in America. E. San Juan, Jr., in “Carlos Bulosan, Filipino Writer-Activist”, states,
“American administrators, social scientist, intellectuals, and others made sense of Filipinos: we were
(like American Indians) savages, half childish primitives, or innocuous animals that can be either civilized
with rigorous tutelage or else slaughtered outright”. In America Is in the Heart, Bulosan properly shows
the reader the animalistic treatment that was inflicted upon the Filipino’s on the west coast. Bulosan
states, “At that time, there was ruthless persecution of the Filipinos throughout the Pacific Coast”. He
wants Filipinos and even white Americans to realize the harmful treatment of Filipinos and the problems
of society.