The Impact That Race, Class and Gender Played in Bulosans Life - Essay Example

We in America understand the many imperfections of democracy and the malignant disease corroding its very heart. We must be united in the effort to make an America in which our people can find happiness. It is a great wrong that anyone in America, whether he be brown or white, should be illiterate or hungry or miserable. (America in his Heart) These memorable words belong to Carlos Bulosan, a Filipino American novelist and an activist of labor politics in the Pacific coast of United States. Bulosan gained recognition in mainstream American society with the 1944 publication of Laughter of my Father, which was excerpted in the New Yorker, Harper's Bazaar, and Town and Country. Today, he is best remembered for his semi-autobiographical work, America is in the Heart, which is credited for giving a 'Third World' perspective to the labor movement in America and for vividly showcasing the experiences of Filipinos during the 30s and 40s. Bulosan left for America on July 22, 1930 at the tender age of seventeen like most Filipinos during the early twentieth century. Being highly influenced by the American style of education during his high school, young Bulosan was led to believe that equality existed among all classes and individuals in the United States. America, he had hoped would help him escape his troubles and find salvation from the poverty and economic depression of his home country. However, as soon as he arrived in San Francisco, he was faced with the hostility of racism. Consequently, he was forced to work in low paying jobs-serving hotels, harvesting in the fields, and even working in the Alaskan canneries. As a result, his dreams were soon shattered and for years he encountered discrimination, starvation and sickness, later undergoing surgery for tuberculosis in Los Angeles. In the meantime, Bulosan took time out to self-educate himself, transforming himself later into the spokesman of the trials and tribulations of the Filipinos in United States. In his own words, 'Writing is a pleasure and a passion to me'. Not only was he a protective voice of the immigrant Filipinos but also a prolific writer. Race, class and gender all exerted an influence on Bulosan's life and writings, but according to me the most prominent factor was race discrimination. There has been a lot of talk revolving around the racism faced by the African Americans in the United States. Bulosan through his work and writings brings to focus the rampant racism suffered by the other minority races like Filipinos in the proverbial 'land of oppurtunities'. Once while in Washington, the whites torched a bunkhouse where he slept. The treatment metted out to him by the whites left him feeling bitter, and isolated. His sums up his sentiments in the following lines: I know deep down in my heart that I am an exile in America. I feel like a criminal running away from a crime I didn't commit. And this crime is that I am a Filipino in America. Bulosan's angst and sense of alienation poured out in his writings. His major theme in his work is exile and return-the effect of leaving home and the need to return to the Philippines in order to make sense of the exile's experience in the United States because of the colonial status of the Philippines. In real life however he could never set foot on his homeland again. His hometown, Binaknan, is also the starting point of his famous semi-autobiographical novel, America is in the Heart. The novel is composed of stories loosely based on his brothers' and friends' experiences, providing a poignant peek into the immigrant Filipino's life during the 1930s and 1940s. America is in the Heart has been since then used as a symbol for the Filipino American identity movement of the 1970s and is also included in many bibliography lists for college courses on Filipino American studies classes, reflecting the importance of this seminal work in Asian American studies. Another important factor in Bulosan's life has been his sense of identification with the working class, having experienced their conditions first-hand after landing in america. The 1950s ushered in the anti-Communist fervor of Senator Joe McCarthy and the Un-American Activities Committee. His socialistic leanings and sympathy with the labour class is reflected in his active involvement in labor organisations and socialist writings. He subsequently also edited the 1952 yearbook of the Union Local 37 International Longshoremen Workers Union (ILWU). Being active in labor politics in California, and a progressive writer of labor struggles, he was blacklisted by the FBI. Hence, we find that race and class were greater influences in Bulosan's life as compared to gender. Let us now look at another significant work highlighting the immigrant experience in United States. Quiet Odyssey by Mary Paik Lee is an autobiography of an inadvertent explorer, who in 1905 became one of the first Korean-born child to live and grow in America. It is a remarkable first-person account of Korean American immigrant life in the early part of the 20th century. The Paiks emigrated from Korea to Hawaii in 1905 and then to California in 1906. Unlike Bulosan, Lee is concerned more with issues of race and gender. In Quite Odyssey she says: In those days, Orientals and others were not allowed to live in town with the white people. The Japanese, Chinese, and Mexicans each had their own little settlement outside of town. My first glimpse of what was to be our camp was rows of one-room shacks, with a few water pumps here and there and little sheds for outhouses. (Quiet Odyssey) Clearly, she was keenly aware of her Korean identity which diffrentiated her from the general white population. The sense of being an outsider is deeply embedded in her memory. In her book, she also relates her first day in school. My first day at school was a very frightening experience. As we entered the schoolyard, several girls formed a ring around us, singing a song and dancing in a circle I learned later that the song they sang was: Ching Chong, Chinaman, Sitting on a wall//Along came a white man, And chopped his head off. As we can see, Lee had to experience racism even as a young girl which influenced her life and shaped her personality in the years to come. In her book, Quiet Odyssey, Lee chronicles the early years of Korean immigration with insight, humor and dignity, neither underestimating her struggles or martyring herself. To make our discussion more wholesome and comprehensive, I would like to site another work by a prominet immigrant writer. Catfish and Mandala by Andrew X. Pham is a remarkably honest retelling of painful family memories and genuinely insightful experiences about the ephemeral nature of cultural identity. Pham's family fled Vietnam when he was ten and settled in the United States. Eventually, he rebels against both his family's and his adopted culture's expectations of him and makes a bicycle pilgrimage back to his homeland via Mexico and Japan in search of his roots. His acoounts are painful, funny yet thought-provoking. Like Bulosan, race and then class were the chief influences in his life, caught as he was between varied cultures and competing identities as vividly reflected in his work. These three works form part of the cannon of writings on the Asian American immigrant experiece and pave our way towards a better understanding of it. Bibliography: Campomanes, Oscar and Todd Gernes. 'Two Letters from America: Carlos Bulosan and the Act of Writing.' MELUS (Spring 1990). America is in the Heart: A Personal History, Carlos Bulosan, published 1973,University of Washington Press. 1. Quiet Odyssey, Mary Paik Lee, published 1990, University of Washington Press. 2. Catfish and Mandala, Andrew X Pham, published 1999, HarperCollins. Read More