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
Helen’s disappearance marks the end of the Filipino Workers’ Association and ushers in a dark period, as white people conduct organized terrorist campaigns against Filipino workers and lobbying groups call upon the state legislature to curtail organization by both agricultural and urban laborers. Carlos, José, and another newspaper editor, Ganzo, want to help unite the city and agricultural workers in their common struggle against their employers.
In the face of a concerted and violent pushback against union activity, Carlos and his companions attempt to fight back with their own organized campaigns for workers’ rights. Here, Carlos’s commitment to improving America holds strong through unprecedented challenges.
Themes
The organizers meet in the home of a San Francisco reporter, Millar, to map out a plan. Felix goes to the Imperial Valley to promote the labor cause, while Nick and Macario work with urban workers in Los Angeles. Conrado Torres, Carlos’s former cannery worker friend, heads to the Yakima Valley, while Mauro Perez remains in Seattle. Carlos is one of the only men in the group without college educations, but they are all nonetheless determined to create a “better America.”
Among the most significant points in Bulosan’s novel is that workers from different industries and backgrounds all have a stake in uniting against their abusive employers. Carlos’s belief in the power of unity over division keeps him dedicated to the labor movement, and the novel suggests that such unity is necessary to keep organizers invested in their fights.
Themes
Carlos is so invested in progressive causes that he begins to neglect his own health. He is still new to the concept of unionism and is just beginning to learn that Filipino and other minority workers need a broader political program to achieve their goals. Lettuce workers strike in San Jose, but the company imports Mexican workers to replace them. José and Carlos attempt to meet with the Mexicans to convince them to join the strike, but five white men ambush the meeting and kidnap José, Millar, and Carlos. The white men drive them to a secluded wooded area, where they call them “monkeys” and beat them savagely. They knock Millar down and beat him, and then they tar and feather José and tie Carlos to a tree and repeatedly punch his body.
The importance of unionizing workers from different backgrounds under a far-reaching political movement is underscored by the severity the pushback from anti-union forces. In one of the novel’s most harrowing moments, Carlos is nearly lynched by racist white men who explicitly fear the threat posed by unionized workers who are also racial minorities. This scene demonstrates that economically empowered Filipinos are a direct threat to white social dominance, and the white men’s use of the dehumanizing epithet “monkeys” is an attempt to repress this threat.
Themes
While the attackers pause to drink whiskey, Millar quietly tells Carlos about a knife in his shoe. Carlos grabs the knife and cuts the ropes binding him. Once free, he crawls into the woods. Though he is barely able to use his shattered leg, he limps towards San Jose. There, he enters a small house, where a white woman named Marian greets him. Carlos tells her that thugs attacked him for his union activities, and the sympathetic woman begins nursing him back to health. He marvels at the contrast between the kind white woman and the savage white men who nearly killed him. Together, Marian and Carlos then move to Los Angeles.
Carlos’s arrival at Marian’s house continues Bulosan’s pattern of following up great despair with great happiness, and vice versa. Like the women who have preceded her in Carlos’s life, Marian becomes a nurturing mother figure to Carlos, and the immediate contrast of the kind Marian with the abusive white men who attacked Carlos again emphasizes the paradoxical nature of American society.
Themes
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