Soul Highway

Introduction to Bulosan

Last week, I received a package from NY-based friend Threese. It is a copy of Carlos Bulosan’s America Is In The Heart, a book which essays the brutal life experienced by the first group of Filipinos who came to the US. Bulosan, a forgotten literary icon, is lost to many of us in the new generation of transplanted Filipinos. Picking up this book is long overdue on my part. (Yes, shame on me.) America Is In The Heart is as much Bulosan’s personal history as ours. I am still on page 53 and to say that Bulosan’s simple but heartbreaking prose is both compelling and captivating is an understatement.