America Is In the Heart -- Thoughts

"I had not seen this sort of brutality in the Phillipines, but my first contact with it in America made me brave. My bravery was still nameless and wanting to express itself. I was not shocked when I saw that my countrymen had become ruthless towards one another, and this sudden impact of cruelty made me insensate to pain and kindness, so that it took me a long time to wholly trust other men [….] I became afraid I would never feel like a human being again. Yet no matter what bestiality encompassed my life I felt sure that somewhere, sometime, I would break free. This faith kept me from completely succumbing to the degradation into which many of my countrymen had fallen. It finally paved my way out of our small, harsh life, painfully but cleanly, into a world of strange intellectual adventures and self-fulfillment." (109)

There are many references throughout the novel that describe scenes amongst the Filipino immigrants as bestial and violent. They are reduced to non-human status time and time again. During the boat scene as Allos travels to America the separation and tiering of physical space on the boat that not only falls in line with class-structure, but dictates not just space on the boat, but the starkly varying conditions of those spaces. The Filipino men are driven down and locked up away from sunlight, deprived of food, medicine and other basic necessities, even called beasts by the nameless white-girl who is suntanning.

"It was now the year of great hatred: The lives of Filipinos were cheaper than those of dogs," (143). There is a recurring theme not just in Bulosan's narrative, but in the narrative of slavery and free-labor this startling lack of humanity towards laborers and minorities.

In the first passage above, despite the brutality, violence and darkness and tone of this excerpt, Bulosan writes of an unwavering belief in hope and change that is rooted to education, "intellectual adventures and self-fulfillment."

Just like his desire to become a doctor when his sister Irena dies, and then a writer to bring back the voiceless, nameless people he has loved, Bulosan's words become his escape, when flight and travel does not work. No matter where he moves to in America this violence proceeds him. Fittingly, the title, America is in the heart is the guiding force for Bulosan. This spirit rooted in the performative, healing power of words and intellectual fulfillment, help him evade violence and steer him towards other horizons beyond the whore-houses and gambling sights so many of his fellow countrymen disappeared in.