Carlos Bulosan
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Carlos Bulosan (born to Ilocano parents in Pangasinan, Philippines on November 24, 1913, died in Seattle, Washington on September 13, 1956) was a Filipino American novelist best-known for the semi-autobiographical America Is in the Heart.
He was active in labor politics along the Pacific coast of the United States and edited the 1952 Yearbook for ILWU Local 37, a predominantly Filipino American cannery union based in Seattle. There is some controversy surrounding the accuracy of events recorded within America is in the Heart. He is celebrated for giving a "Third World" perspective to the labor movement in America and for telling the experience of Filipinos during the 30' and 40's.
In the 1970's, with a resurgence in Asian/Pacific Island activism, his writings were discovered in a library in the University of Washington leading to posthumous releases of several unfinished works.
His other novels include The Laughter of My Father and the posthumously published The Cry and the Dedication which detailed the armed Huk Rebellion in the Philippines.
As a progressive writer of labor struggles, he was blacklisted by the FBI due to his labor organizing and socialist writings. Denied a means to provide for himself his later years were of hardship and flight. He died in Seattle suffering from an advanced stage of bronchopneumonia. He is buried at Queen Anne Hill in Seattle.
[edit] Sources
- Bulosan, Carlos (1995). The Cry and the Dedication. Temple University Press.
[edit] Quotes
"The old world is dying, but a new world is being born. It generates inspiration from the chaos that beats upon us all. The false grandeur and security, the unfulfilled promises and illusory power, the number of the dead and those about to die, will charge the forces of our courage and determination. The old world will die so that the new world will be born with less sacrifice and agony on the living ... "
"We in America understand the many imperfections of democracy and the malignant disease corroding its very heart. We must be united in the effort to make an America in which our people can find happiness. It is a great wrong that anyone in America, whether he be brown or white, should be illiterate or hungry or miserable."
- from America is in the Heart
