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
Faced with his mortality, Carlos retreats to the Los Angeles Public Library, where he plans “to read ten thousand books on all subjects.” He finds solace in immigrant autobiographies that remind him of his own experience as an immigrant to America. One day, a poet named Ronald Patterson meets Carlos in the library and gives him stacks of leftist magazines and publications. The magazines give Carlos “a new pattern of ideas.”
Books continue to inspire Carlos and fuel his desire to put his education to good use. His dedication to reading socialist publications also links his time in the hospital as a self-taught student to his time on the street as a union organizer, emphasizing the crucial interconnection of learning and action.
Themes
Ronald then takes Carlos to a meeting of socialists, who inspire Carlos with their goal of “the unification of minorities.” Hoping to rally Filipinos to this cause, Carlos meets a communist party member who claims to be the only Filipino communist in the city, but his rigid devotion to the party deters Carlos. After a discussion with José, Carlos suggests forming a separate, Filipino socialist party branch. They distribute leaflets and hold a meeting that attracts a crowd of Filipinos.
The communist party member’s rigid adherence to party rules contrasts with Carlos’s desire for a welcoming labor movement that embraces all kinds of people. This desire to unify disparate groups of people becomes the backbone of Carlos’s union work through the remainder of his life.
Themes
As the crowd gathers, José and Carlos address the numerous inequalities that Filipinos in American society face. When the Filipino communist and his associate, a woman named Anna Dozier, learn about the meeting, they tell Carlos that he cannot establish a Filipino branch of the Communist Party. Confused, Carlos takes a bus north, and finds solace in the green natural surroundings.
Here, nature again provides an invigorating respite for Carlos when he tires of the ugliness and bickering that so often characterize the human experience.
Themes
