rufzerg666 reviewed America Is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan (Washington paperbacks, WP-68)
Review of 'America Is in the Heart' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
The figure of Carlos Bulosan cuts a distinct outline in the history of Philippine-American relations. His account of the exploitation and violence perpetrated upon Filipino farm workers in the United States during the Great Depression, through the War and until the early 1950s when McCarthyist hysteria started gripping the minds of the mainstream American population, provides an incalculable source of a viewpoint that is not much read in mainstream historical works even today. Reading Bulosan is reading not only the biography of a single Filipino coming to grips with a new world of exploitation, it is the history of the whole uprooted Filipino workers who sought to understand the America that was idealized and the America that was reality. This paper aims to highlight the contradictions in the conception of America in the writings of Bulosan as we will find that the praises he often sings for America, is for …
The figure of Carlos Bulosan cuts a distinct outline in the history of Philippine-American relations. His account of the exploitation and violence perpetrated upon Filipino farm workers in the United States during the Great Depression, through the War and until the early 1950s when McCarthyist hysteria started gripping the minds of the mainstream American population, provides an incalculable source of a viewpoint that is not much read in mainstream historical works even today. Reading Bulosan is reading not only the biography of a single Filipino coming to grips with a new world of exploitation, it is the history of the whole uprooted Filipino workers who sought to understand the America that was idealized and the America that was reality. This paper aims to highlight the contradictions in the conception of America in the writings of Bulosan as we will find that the praises he often sings for America, is for an abstract America that is an almost utopian ideal divorced from reality. The paper will attempt to present this seeming contradiction by looking at the works written by Bulosan, works written about Bulosan and of the Asian immigrant in general, and lastly will draw on the author's own interpretation of Bulosan as an artist.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/52901549/America-as-Paradox-Philippine-American-Relations-Through-The-Eyes-of-Carlos-Bulosan-by-Rufus-Montecalvo
