Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in America Is in the Heart, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Beauty in Despair
Race and American Identity
Education vs. Ignorance
Poverty
Summary
Analysis
As the train rumbles towards California, Carlos watches groups of hobos board it at different stops. One night the sound of a girl crying wakes him up, and to his horror, he realizes that she is being raped in the dark. Carlos tries to stop her assailant, but is knocked unconscious by an unseen attacker. The train stops at Hood, Washington, and Carlos strikes up a conversation with the girl, but she eventually leaves the train.
Violence towards women is one of the darkest side effects of the despair and poverty that plagues Filipino life in America. The violent rape of a girl in the train car marks the first of many such incidents of sexualized violence that so often characterize male-female relationships in Bulosan’s novel.
Themes
In Reno, Nevada, Carlos boards a different train. He decides to go to Stockton, California after he learns that it is home to a large Filipino population. In Stockton’s Chinatown, he witnesses a Chinese man shoot and kill a Filipino. After fleeing, Carlos meets a man named Claro, who offers him food and shelter and tells him to stay away from Chinese-dominated Stockton “until [he] are ready to fight for [Filipino] people.”
This is the first of several murders of Filipino men that Carlos will witness. These incidents demonstrate the cruel extent to which American society goes to devalue Filipino life. Thus, when Claro entreats Carlos to fight for his people, he means that the fight in question is a literal life and death struggle.
Themes
