Biographical research paper

BULOSAN, Carlos 

Contents

1. BIBLIOGRAPHY 

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September 1956, Seattle, Washington

Among the most celebrated of Filipino American writers was B., whose poetry, short stories, and autobiographical history, America Is in the Heart (1946), remain vital texts for scholars of Asian American literature and class struggle alike. Known as much for his activism as for his writing, B.--who never returned to the Philippines--made the uplift of his countrymen in America his principal cause during his lifetime.

B. was one of the first Filipinos to write in English while in America, and achieved nominal fame as a writer of poems and stories. Who's Who listed him in 1932, only two years after his arrival in Seattle. "Freedom from Want" (1943), an essay published in the Saturday Evening Post and illustrated by Norman Rockwell, expressed B.'s ultimate faith in American democracy, an ideal that would alternately trouble and encourage him throughout his life. One stow, "The End of the War" (1944), published in the New Yorker, drew charges of plagiarism. Though the claim was settled out of court, B. and his reputation suffered from the publicity. Laughter of My Father (1944), a collection of stories serialized in the New Yorker, was misinterpreted by critics as a humorous work. B. had tried satire to convey the hardship of Filipino peasant life, a convention he decided to eschew in his personal history.

Look magazine recognized America Is in the Heart as one of the fifty most important American books ever published. It documents the period beginning with the narrator's childhood in the Philippines through his time in the American West searching for work and organizing Filipino laborers. Though it celebrates minor triumphs, the book focuses upon the disillusionment and tremendous brutality suffered by the narrator and his acquaintances at the hands of a racist America. Perhaps to eliminate any further doubt over his disposition as a writer, B. features the injustices of an unsympathetic system, explicitly detailing the violence visited upon the narrator because of his race and union sympathies. Still, moments of kindness from strangers rescue him from total despair and also keep the narrative from turning into polemic. Critics have described the book's style as uneven--perhaps owing to B.'s belief that he was dying as he was writing it--with the author himself recognizing its fragmentary quality.

Controversy continued to follow B., as Filipino intellectuals questioned the veracity of his life account. The narrator could not possibly have experienced everything claimed, they argued: B. must have fabricated certain events to elevate his own stature. Since the author most likely appropriated the experiences of others, America Is in the Heart is more accurately regarded as a collective autobiography instead of as B.'s own. Still, since B. saw his writing as a means toward winning equality for all Filipino laborers, he must have felt himself bound less by convention than by the strictest need to voice their common protest. His work remains the logical introduction to Filipino American literature for all students of the field.

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Evangelista, S., C. B. and His Poetry (1985); Morantte, P.C., Remembering C. B.: His Heart Affair with America (1984); San Juan, E., Jr., C. B. and the Imagination of the Class Struggle (1972)

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By David Shih