I was reading Carlos Bulosans important book America is in the Heart, and I was quite unsure why I was spending time reading autobiographies when I should be out finding informants and interviewing people for my research. The last chapters chronicled Bulosans and his friends struggle for the rights to citizenship by Filipinos in the U.S. For many years, their struggle was futile -- many of their activist magazines folded, and many of the labor union strikes they organized were dismantled. Their friends were brutally tortured, if not killed. Towards the end of the book, Japan bombs Pearl Harbor. Filipinos who hated the US for its inhumane treatment of little brown monkeys hoped to fight for a country that was sometimes also kind to them. They also wanted to fight to protect the home and the families they left behind. Carlos friends in the labor union, and his brother, left and joined the US navy. Theres an interesting continuity here with my own work, I think, as the retired US navymen I have interviewed here in my hometown remember with pain their difficult days as labouring peasants. Carlos began his book with the most poetic yet painful description of the life of the peasant class. Heading for the US was his way out of peasant poverty, yet in the US, he found a life of unimaginable racism and confusion. For those Filipinos already the US, joining the US navy was a venue to perhaps express a loyalty to a country that have killed, yet have revived them many times. I am glad to have found this book at home. Something to think about. One of those times when time wasted turns into a pot of gold.
Posted on: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 02:08:15 +0000
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