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
Carlos describes the discrimination Filipinos experience during the “year of the great hatred.” When a Filipino in Pasadena marries a white girl, they are brought to court in the case of Roldan v. The United States. The case challenges the law that Filipinos are not “Mongolians” and are therefore exempt from laws forbidding marriages between whites and Mongolians. Amidst such racial fervor, José and Carlos arrive in San Diego, where the latter is beaten several times by hotel and restaurant owners. He and José take a train south to the town of Holtville, where they learn that a Filipino labor organizer “had been found dead in a ditch.” In another instance, a restaurant owner and several other white men nearly beat a Filipino man to death for bringing his wife (who is white) and their mixed-race child into the restaurant.
White racism towards Filipinos is shown here to be institutional, as well as explicitly violent. Violence serves as a method for enforcing the laws (such as the miscegenation law to which Bulosan refers) that codify and restrict the freedoms of Filipinos. Because the law itself upholds the perverse “justice” of racism towards Filipinos, white men have free rein to physically attack Filipino men with absolute impunity.
Themes
While sneaking through a pea field, Carlos and José come across a jalopy driven by a man named Frank, who gives them a ride to Bakersfield. They find work on a large farm, but soon a Filipino labor camp at a neighboring farm goes up in flames. “I understood it to be a racial issue,” Carlos notes, “because everywhere I went I saw white men attacking Filipinos.” The men flee to the freight yards, but the boxcars are all loaded. Detectives arrive to prevent the Filipinos from riding the train. José attempts to avoid the detectives but gets caught under the train, and both of his feet are severed from his body.
Here, Carlos recognizes that violence is as prevalent American society as it is anywhere else. In a key moment of his informal education, he understands that violence stems directly from the racism that is everywhere in American culture. Violence and racism are intimately connected, with each one fueling the other. Because racism tells white people that Filipinos are inferior and unwelcome, it justifies the violence against Filipinos that is intended to ultimately make them leave America.
Themes
Carlos and Frank rescue José and try to hail a car, but the motorists spurn their cries for help. Eventually, an old man drives them to the hospital, where José receives care. Carlos marvels at this paradox in American culture: drivers on the highway spit at the Filipinos, yet white people in the hospital give them loving care. “Why was America so kind and yet so cruel?” Carlos wonders. While José stays in the hospital, Frank and Carlos take a train east to Idaho, where they work several weeks picking peas. Frank soon tires of pea-picking and takes a bus to Chicago, and Carlos travels to Montana. There, he works in a Filipino labor camp lead by a man named Pete.
For Bulosan, America is a paradox because it displays great kindness alongside horrible cruelty. Throughout the novel, Carlos struggles to make sense of this paradox by attempting to discern whether the “real” America is naturally kind or naturally cruel. This paradox is yet another reflection of the book’s theme of beauty in despair. As is the case after the incident with the railroad detectives, Carlos often witnesses beauty (via the kindness of the hospital workers, in this case) after moments of seemingly relentless despair.
Themes
Pete’s wife, Myra, is having an affair with another worker, Poco. One night, Pete beats Myra over the affair and attempts to kill her with a knife. Carlos intervenes, but he is knocked out by Poco’s cousin, Alfred. When the violence subsides, Pete and Myra reconcile, but when Poco arrives and vows to kill Pete, Alfred and Carlos ride away in a truck. They are heading back west, “back to the beginning of [Carlos’s] life in America,” where Carlos is “going back to start all over again.”
Carlos attempts to escape the violence and hardship he has experienced on the west coast by traveling to work in Montana. He quickly discovers, however, that the cruelty and violence that so often characterizes Filipino life in America is hardly limited to California.
Themes
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