AMERICA IS IN THE HEART
Treachery marks much of the history of Filipino-American relations–from the initial betrayal of the 1898 revolution against Spain, launched by Jose Rizal and Emilio Aguinaldo and turned by the U.S. into an empire grab, to the recent unholy alliance with the predatory Marcoses.
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In this country the ugliness continued in racist anger at the former colonial subjects who dared come here to pursue ideals we long ago abandoned. The cruel consequences of this contempt are powerfully presented in America Is in the Heart, the 1946 autobiographical novel by Filipino poet and writer Carlos Bulosan (1913-1956). The work chronicles a little over a decade (1930-1941) of Bulosan’s struggle to be a better American than the ones he met, a time in which he organized unions and fought discrimination. The novel ultimately exalts the resilience and resolve of all American immigrants and migrant workers.
Millado sets his play in 1936 in a hospital where Bulosan was treated for tuberculosis and where he learned his power as a writer. Millado then uses flashbacks to take us to incidents in the novel. The results resemble a Filipino Grapes of Wrath, buoyed by the same populist sympathies and the same belief in the superiority of endurance to hate. The story, told in English and Tagalog, isn’t always accessible, the depiction of white racism is as wooden and stereotypical as it’s satirical, and the women depicted seem developed only in their suffering (especially Eileen O’Dell, the white communist who gives Carlos a cause). Nonetheless America Is in the Heart is trenchantly authentic, an unfiltered survivor’s story.
