That 2006 is the 60th anniversary of the publication of Carlos Bulosan’s “America is in the Heart” makes a public reading of his book very timely.But what gives Bulosan’s semi-autobiographic, semi-fiction novel more currency is its theme: the story of the migrant Filipino in a foreign land. Bulosan’s book was published in 1946 and based on his own experiences as a migrant worker in US farms in the 1930s-‘40s. It is a telling tale of how the Filipino worker’s odyssey abroad has started long before the era of globalization—and that poverty, the main trigger of this phenomenon, has been around since colonial times.
According to non-government institutional studies, there are now about eight million overseas Filipino workers (OFWs). Scattered in about 180 countries around the world, these Filipinos face war or the threat of war, abuse (physical, sexual and psychological), social-political and economic discrimination, and loneliness caused by separation from the family, often resulting in mental distress especially for women. There are now about seven females out of ten OFWs.
On November 16, 2006 personalities known in the circles of civil society, activist political organizations, as well as lovers of Bulosan’s work and literature in general took time to read favorite parts of Bulosan’s “America is in the Heart.”
The public reading is the first in a series of planned readings and other activities aimed at celebrating Bulosan’s work. These activities lead to the centennial celebration of his birth anniversary in 2011. Included in the planned activities are readings and workshops in schools.
There were those who chose to read on the narrator’s (deemed to be Bulosan) childhood poverty:
“Then I saw my mother's familiar back. She was following the plow, her skirt tucked between her legs. Suddenly I knew what Leon had felt that day he came home, running suddenly to take the plow from my father. I started running across the fields and leaping over ditches, shouting and calling frantically: "Mother! Mother! Mother!"My mother stopped the carabao and looked toward me. The sun was falling directly upon her face, and she raised her hand to protect her eyes from the strong morning light. When she recognized me, she tied the rope to the handle of the plow, as my father used to do, and waited for me."Have you come home, son?" she said. And that was all she could say. Her mouth began to tremble with joy and sorrow always one and the same. Suddenly, she grabbed me affectionately and wept, murmuring: "We are poor people, son. We are poor people, son."Another favorite was excerpts about the journey to the United States as a young adult.
“I found the dark hole of the steerage and lay on my bunk for days without food, seasick and lonely. I was restless at night and many disturbing thoughts came to my mind. Why had I left home? What would I do in America? I looked into the faces of my companions for a comforting answer, but they were as young and bewildered as I, and my only consolation was their proximity and the familiarity of their dialects. It was not until we had left Japan that I began to feel better.
One day in mid-ocean, I climbed through the narrow passageway to the deck where other steerage passengers were sunning themselves. Most of them were Ilocanos, who were fishermen in the northern coastal regions of Luzon. They were talking easily and eating rice with salted fish with their bare hands, and some of them were walking, barefoot and unconcerned, in their homemade cotton shorts. The first-class passengers were annoyed, and an official of the boat came down and drove us back into the dark haven below. The small opening at the top of the iron ladder was shut tight, and we did not see the sun again until we had passed Hawaii.”
The most read were parts about how the main character survived life in the US.“…The man said something, but they had already turned and the wind carried it away. I was to hear that girl’s voice in many ways afterward in the United States. It became no longer her voice, but an angry chorus shouting:
“Why don’t they ship those monkeys back where they came from?”
We arrived in Seattle on a June day. My first sight of the approaching land was an exhilarating experience. Everything seemed native and promising to me. It was like coming home after a long voyage, although as yet I had no home in this city. Everything seemed familiar and kind—the white faces of the buildings melting in the soft afternoon sun, the gray contours of the surrounding valleys that seemed to vanish in the last periphery of light. With a sudden surge of joy, I knew that I must find a home in this new land.
I had only twenty cents left, not even enough to take me to Chinatown where, I had been informed, a Filipino hotel and two restaurants were located. Fortunately two oldtimers put me in a car with four others, and took us to a hotel on King Street, the heart of Filipino life in Seattle. Marcelo, who was also in the car, had a cousin named Elias who came to our room with another oldtimer. Elias and his unknown friend persuaded my companions to play a strange kind of card game. In a little while Elias got up and touched his friend suggestively; then they disappeared and we never saw them again.”Publisher Karina Bolasco, president of Anvil Publishing that just renewed in 2006 the right to reprint Bulosan’s “America…,” read a very timely message on America:
"It is but fair to say that America is not a land of one race or one class of men. We are all Americans that have toiled and suffered and known oppression and defeat, from the first Indian that offered peace in Manhattan to the last Filipino pea pickers.America is not bound by geographical latitudes. America is not merely a land or an institution. America is in the hearts of men that died for freedom: it is also in the eyes of men that are building a new world. America is a prophecy of a new society of men: of a system that knows no sorrow or strife or suffering. America is a warning to those who would try to falsify the ideals of freemen."
America is also the nameless foreigner, the homeless refugee, the hungry boy begging for a job and the black body dangling on a tree .America is the illiterate immigrant who is ashamed that the world of books and intellectual opportunities is closed to him.We are all that nameless foreigner, that homeless refugee, that hungry boy, that illiterate immigrant and that lynched black body. All of us, from the first Adams to the last Filipino, native born or alien, educated or illiterate— We are America!"
