America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

by Carlos Bulosan, Carey McWilliams (Introduction)

Overview

This classic of Asian American history is now available in an unabridged audio edition. First published in 1946, this autobiography of the well-known Filipino poet describes his 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. 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 witnessed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780295801070
Publisher:	University of Washington Press
Publication date:	07/01/2011
Series:	Classics of Asian American Literature
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	421 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Narrator Jose Horstman Omila is the executive director of the Philippines Performance Arts Company and the Bayanihan Arts Center in Tampa Bay, Florida.

What People are Saying About This

Greg Castilla

The premier text of the Filipino-American experience.

Carlos Bulosan

It was a crime to be a Filipino in California.... The public streets were not free to my people: we were stopped each time these vigilant patrolmen saw us driving a car. We were suspect each time we were seen with a white woman. And perhaps it was this narrowing of our life into an island, into a filthy segment of American society that had driven Filipinos... inward, hating everyone and despising all positive urgencies toward freedom.

Editorial Reviews

Bulosan’s gripping memoir-novel of a young Filipino immigrant long ago secured its place in Asian American literature. . . . An outstanding introductory essay extends the historical discussion (and in some ways brings it full circle) in this third edition. . . . [Bulosan’s] call to action resonates with the same urgency today as it did seven decades ago.

Pacific Northwest Quarterly - Greg Lewis

America came to him in a public ward in the 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.

New York Times - Carlos P. Romulo

People interested in driving from America the scourge of intolerance should read Mr. Bulosan's autobiography. They should read it that they may draw from the anger it will arouse in them the determination to bring to an end the vicious nonsense of racism.

Saturday Review of Literature