America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

America Is in the Heart is a poignant and powerful semi-autobiographical novel by Filipino-American author Carlos Bulosan: his classic chronicles the life of Allos, a young Filipino man, as he navigates the harsh realities of poverty, racism, and exploitation in both the Philippines and the United States during the early 20th century. From his rural upbringing in the Philippines to his struggle as a migrant worker on the West Coast, Bulosan captures the immigrant experience with unflinching honesty and lyrical prose. At its heart, the book is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and a reflection on the meaning of America as a land of both suffering and hope. Widely regarded as a cornerstone of Asian-American literature, America Is in the Heart continues to resonate as a profound exploration of identity, injustice, and the pursuit of the American Dream.

Poet, essayist, novelist, fiction writer and labor organizer, Carlos Bulosan (1911-1956) wrote one of the most influential working class literary classics about the U.S. pre-World War II, a period and setting similar to that of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row. Bulosan's semi-autobiographical novel America is in the Heart begins with the narrator's rural childhood in the Philippines and the struggles of land-poor peasant families affected by US imperialism after the Spanish American War of the late 1890s. Carlos's experiences with other Filipino migrant laborers, who endured intense racial abuse in the fields, orchards, towns, cities and canneries of California and the Pacific Northwest in the 1930s, reexamine the ideals of the American dream. Bulosan was one of the most important 20th century social critics with his deeply moving account of what it was like to be criminalized in the U.S. as a Filipino migrant drawn to the ideals of what America symbolized and committed to social justice for all marginalized groups.

2025 Reprint of the 1946 Edition.