America Is in the Heart

Carlos Bulosan(1913 - 1956) was an English-language Filipino novelist and poet. Born in the Philippines, he immigrated to the United States at age seventeen and worked as a farmworker, dishwasher, and ultimately, as a labor organizer in both Washington and California.

"America came to [Carlos Bulosan] 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 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."