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
On his trip northward, Carlos stops in the San Fernando Valley, where he finds an agricultural camp of Filipino lemon pickers. He searches for the leader of the group and meets the leader’s wife, an educated woman who has read Carlos’s poetry. When the woman’s husband arrives, he tells Carlos about his time in the Navy and his long history as a farmer. The man’s attachment to the land reminds Carlos of his peasant father.
Carlos’s time sent with the leader of the lemon camp imparts a desire to finally place roots in America. Ever since his arrival in Seattle, Carlos has led an itinerant, rootless existence, but now Carlos realizes that he still feels connected to the values that his own father passed on to him long before.
Themes
After a long chat, Carlos leaves the lemon camp for Bakersfield. There, he goes to the large home of a Filipino farm contractor named Cabao, who is wealthy, educated, and married to a beautiful wife who is cheating on him. The two men talk, and Carlos learns that despite his wealth and power, Cabao is unhappy with his life. After leaving Cabao’s house, Carlos goes to Stockton, where Filipino asparagus workers are striking.
Among the strikers, Carlos spots Claro carrying anti-Japanese placards. Claro explains that a Japanese woman has been strikebreaking in the area by supplying laborers to replace the strikers. Claro also notes that the Chinese gambling lords are cooperating with the strikers by closing their dens of vice, thereby ensuring that Filipinos will not lose their money in those places. Carlos wonders if there is a way to make peace with the Japanese community and the Chinese community.
Claro has shown kindness to Carlos in the past. Hisdivisive style of labor agitation, however, does not sit well with Carlos’s commitment to unifying different groups of people behind a common cause. This incident shows how difficult it can be to foster unity, even when one is working with someone as kind as Claro.
Themes
