America Is in the Heart Quotes

“Yes, I will be a writer and make all of you live again in my words.”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

“The human heart is bigger than the world, I said to myself.”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

“America is also the nameless foreigner, the homeless refugee, the hungry boy begging for a job and the black body dangling on a tree. America is the illiterate immigrant who is ashamed that the world of books and intellectual opportunities is closed to him. We are all that nameless foreigner, that homeless refugee, that hungry boy, that illiterate immigrant and that lynched black body. All of us, from the first Adams to the last Filipino, native born or alien, educated or illiterate—We are America!”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart

“It is but fair to say that America is not a land of one race or one class of men. We are all Americans that have toiled and suffered and known oppression and defeat, from the first Indian that offered peace in Manhattan to the last Filipino pea pickers. America is not bound by geographical latitudes. America is not merely a land or an institution. America is in the hearts of men that died for freedom; it is also in the eyes of men that are building a new world. America is a prophecy of a new society of men: of a system that knows no sorrow or strife or suffering. America is a warning to those who would try to falsify the ideals of freemen.”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart

“This is the beginning of your life in America,” Julio said. “We'll take a freight train from Sunnyside and go to nowhere.” “I would like to go to California,” I said. “I have two brothers there—but I don't know if I could find them.” “All roads go to California and all travelers wind up in Los Angeles,” Julio said. “But not this traveler. I have lived there too long. I know that state too damn well….” “What do you mean?” I asked. Suddenly he became sad and said: “It is hard to be a Filipino in California.”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

“So from day to day I read, and reading widened my mental horizon, creating a spiritual kinship with other men who had pondered over the miseries of their countries. Then it came to me that the place did not matter: these sensitive writers reacted to the social dynamics of their time. I, too, reacted to my time. I promised myself that I would read ten thousand books when I got well. I plunged into books, boring through the earth's core, leveling all seas and oceans, swimming in the constellations.”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

“Throughout that year I read one book a day including Sundays. I could obtain all the books I wanted from Eileen Odell. I discovered a world of music, of light and immortal things. I trembled with delight when I came upon a brilliant phrase or a novel idea. While the other patients were worrying and complaining, I explored the worlds of great men's living minds.”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

“Why was America so kind and yet so cruel? Was there no way to simplifying things in this continent so that suffering would be minimized? Was there no common denominator on which we could all meet?”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

“I knew it was hard to die. It was hard to live I had discovered, but it was even harder to die. Why did some men live thoughtlessly? Why did they think life was something they could borrow from other men?”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

“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. “We must live in America where there is freedom for all regardless of color, station and beliefs. Great Americans worked with unselfish devotion toward one goal, that is, to use the power of the myriad peoples in the service of America’s freedom. They made it their guiding principle. In this we are the same; we must also fight for an America where a man should be given unconditional opportunities to cultivate his potentialities and to restore him to his rightful dignity.”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart

“This is also what critical reading of our histories makes possible: we cannot repair what we cannot reconcile; we cannot truly know what we will not truly see.”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart

“Critical reading returns you to your life with renewed eyes; it deepens the world for you, inasmuch as it deepens you for the world.”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart

“Critical reading is a civic act; it’s the kind of reading that asks you to be both sharp and vulnerable to both the world of the book and the world the book emerges from; the kind of reading that asks you to bear witness to the things in a book that speak low and deep to some low and deep part of you, which might not always say easy or comforting things.”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart

“America is in the hearts of men that died for freedom; it is also in the eyes of men that are building a new world.”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

“This is the greatest responsibility of literature: to find in our struggle that which has a future. Literature is a living and growing thing. We must destroy that which is dying, because it does not die by itself.”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

“I remembered all my years in the Philippines, my father fighting for his inherited land, my mother selling boggoong to the impoverished peasants. I remembered all my brothers and their bitter fight for a place in the sun, their tragic fear that they might not live long enough to contribute something vital to the world. I remembered my own swift and dangerous life in America. And I cried, recalling all the years that had come and gone, but my remembrance gave me a strange courage and the vision of a better life. “Yes, I will be a writer and make all of you live again in my words,” I sobbed.”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

“I think this is really the meaning of life: the extension of little things into the future so that they might be useful to other people.”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

“Then it came to me that we were all fighting against one enemy: Fascism. It was in every word and gesture, every thought.”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

“The educator lowered his lands slowly and blinked at us. I thought for a moment he would break down and cry, but he bit his lips and gathered his dignity about him.

"My countrymen," he said, "is there no way to make the American people respect us in the way that we respect them?”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

“I felt that I was nearing the end, and every day created a havoc in me.”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

“Was there a happy situation in the world outside of books?”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

“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.

"We must live in America where there is freedom for all regardless of color, station and beliefs. Great Americans worked with unselfish devotion toward one goal, that is, to use the power of the myriad peoples in the service of America's freedom. They made it their guiding principle. In this we are the same; we must also fight for an America where a man should be given unconditional opportunities to cultivate his potentialities and to restore him to his rightful dignity.

"It is but fair to say that America is not a land of one race or one class of men. We are all Americans that have toiled and suffered and known oppression and defeat, from the first Indian that offered peace in Manhattan to the last Filipino pea pickers. America is not bound by geographical latitudes. America is not merely a land or an institution. America is in the hearts of men that died for freedom; it is also in the eyes of men that are building a new world. America is a prophecy of a new society of men: of a system that knows no sorrow or strife or suffering. America is a warning to those who would try to falsify the ideals of freemen.

"America is also the nameless foreigner, the homeless refugee, the hungry boy begging for a job and the black body dangling on a tree. America is the illiterate immigrant who is ashamed that the world of books and intellectual opportunities is closed to him. We are all that nameless foreigner, that homeless refugee, that hungry boy, that illiterate immigrant and that lynched black body. All of us, from the first Adams to the last Filipino, native born or alien, educated or illiterate—We are America!”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

“My distrust of white men grew, and drove me blindly into the midst of my own people; together we hid cynically behind our mounting fears, hating the broad white universe at our door. A movement of the hand, and it was there--yet it could not be touched, could not be attained ever. I tried to find a justification for my sudden rebellion--why it was so sudden, and black, and hateful. Was it possible that, coming to America with certain illusions of equality, I had slowly succumbed to the hypnotic effects of racial fear?”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

“It was not easy to understand why the Filipinos were brutal yet tender, nor was it easy to believe that they had been made this way by the reality of America.”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

“Several weeks after our work had begun rumors of trouble reached our camp. Then, on the other side of town, a Filipino labor camp was burned. My fellow workers could not explain it to me. I understood it to be a racial issue, because everywhere I went I saw white men attacking Filipinos. It was but natural for me to hate and fear the white man.”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

“And I won't have a Filipino in my house, when my daughter is around," said one of the women.

"Is it true that they are sex-crazy?" the man next to her asked. "I understand that they go crazy when they see a white woman."

"Same as the niggers," said the man who did not like Filipino servants. "Same as the Chinamen, with their opium."

"They are all sex-starved," said the man of the house with finality.

"What is this country coming to?" one of the women said.”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

“We jumped into a waiting bus, and two Negro laborers followed us. We did not drop any money in the slot; the Negroes took the blame. I felt ashamed. But it was another lesson: the persecuted were always the first victims of misunderstanding.”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

“Alonzo, the student, met a divorcée who sent him to college. But one night, when they were living together (they could not marry in the state), detectives broke into their apartment and took Alonzo to jail.

"You can't do this to me," he kept saying. "I know my rights. I haven't committed any crime."

"Listen to the brown monkey talk," said one of the detectives, slapping Alonzo in the face. "He thinks he has the right to be educated. Listen to the bastard talk English. He thinks he is a white man.”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

“I don't drink," I said.

"Go on--drink!" a curly-haired boy prodded me. "Drink like hell. This is America. We all drink like hell. Go on, boy!”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History

“I went to Binalonan to say good-bye to Luciano. His wife had just given birth to another baby. I knew that he would have a child every year. I knew that in ten years he would be so burdened with responsibilities that he would want to lie down and die. I was glad that I was free from the life he was living.”
― Carlos Bulosan, America Is in the Heart: A Personal History