Carlos Bulosan: "Filipino Americans' Most Articulate Spokesman"

Carlos Bulosan was born and raised in the farming village Mangusmana on the island of Luzon. Records say that he was born in 1911, although this year is questionable since Bulosan himself claimed several different birthdates. Because his family suffered greatly from poverty, he decided to travel to the U.S. at the age of 17 to help alleviate their economic situation. However, upon arriving in America with no money and barely knowing any English, he faced economic and racial hardships of his own, such as being “shanghaied” and sold for $5 to work at an Alaskan cannery. After working various jobs along the West Coast like many Filipino immigrants, Bulosan became involved in the labor movement between 1935 and 1941, organizing unions to protect fellow workers. His first publications about fighting against racial discrimination were featured in a radical Filipino literary magazine called The New Tide. He continued writing even after being kept in the hospital for tuberculosis for two years. Although his health continued to deteriorate, he perpetuated in his writings, and in 1946, published America is in the Heart, based on his brothers’ and friends’ experiences as Filipino immigrants in the 1930’s and 40’s. A decade later, Carlos Bulosan died of tuberculosis. He is currently buried in Seattle, remembered as Filipino Americans’ most articulate spokesman.

Carlos Bulosan aided the Filipino labor movement through his writing. He wrote many poems and articles that exposed the racism and other injustices that Filipinos faced in the U.S. His most famous work, America is in the Heart, Bulosan narrates the struggles that Filipino migrant workers faced in the U.S. Nevertheless, he expresses that despite all the suffering, no one could ever destroy his faith in America, and that the country ultimately leaves us with a feeling of hope for the future. Thus, Carlos Bulosan’s greatest contribution to the Filipino racial and labor struggles was his literature. He uncovered the injustices that Filipinos encountered, but also, he restored Filipino immigrants’ faith in the country by showing them that despite these social impediments, America is still full of opportunities for them to chase. Consequently, Bulosan was an essential figure in Filipino American literature because he portrayed America as it was realistically. His writings both warned and encouraged Filipinos that had aspired to come to the new country of the experiences that were waiting for them so that they would be more aware of the struggles they would have to endure but also have a reminder of why they came to country. Moreover, these documented non-fictional and fictional experiences would show later generations of Filipinos, Filipino Americans, and Americans the vast contributions that the first Filipino immigrants gave to the country.