Carlos Bulosan

• Name — Carlos Bulosan • Birth Name — Carlos Sampayan Bulosan • Born — 24 November 1913 • Birthplace — Binalonan, Pangasinan, Philippine Islands • Died — 11 September 1956 • Place of death — Seattle, Washington, U.S • Occupation — * Novelist • essayist • labor union organizer

Bulosan was born to Ilocano parents in the Philippines in Binalonan, Pangasinan. There is considerable debate around his actual birth date, as he himself used several dates. 1911 is generally considered to be the most reliable answer, based on his baptismal records, but according to the Lorenzo Duyanen Sampayan, his childhood playmate and nephew, Bulosan was born on November 2, 1913. Most of his youth was spent in the countryside as a farmer. It is during his youth that he and his family were economically impoverished by the rich and political elite, which would become one of the main themes of his writing. His home town is also the starting point of his semi-autobiographical novel, America is in the Heart. Following the pattern of many Filipinos during the American colonial period, he left for America on July 22, 1930, at age 17, in the hope of finding salvation from the economic depression of his home. He never again saw his Philippine homeland. Upon arriving in Seattle, he was met with racism and was forced to work low paying jobs. He worked as a farmworker, harvesting grapes and asparagus, while also working other forms of hard labor in the fields of California. He also worked as a dishwasher with his brother Lorenzo in the famous Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo which opened in 1958 or almost three years after Bulosan had died. In 1936, Bulosan suffered from tuberculosis and was taken to the Los Angeles County Hospital. There, he underwent three operations and stayed two years, mostly in the convalescent ward. During his long stay in the hospital, Bulosan spent his time constantly reading and writing.

Bulosan contributed to the labor movement and progressive causes through his editorial and literary work. He was associated with the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA) and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) a predominantly Filipino American cannery trade union based in Seattle. In 1934 he helped edit The New Tide, a short-lived Filipino workers’ literary magazine that connected him with other left-leaning writers, including Richard Wright and Sanora Babb. Through The New Tide, Bulosan promoted themes of social justice, anti-colonial struggle, and solidarity among working-class communities. There he was hired to edit the 1952 Yearbook for International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 37. During the 1940s and 1950s, Bulosan expanded his activism as a journalist for the ILWU. His articles and reports in union publications addressed Filipino migrant labor conditions and supported multiracial worker solidarity along the Pacific Coast. His visibility as a union writer led to FBI surveillance during the early Cold War years, when he was considered a “dangerous subversive.” Despite these pressures, Bulosan continued to use newsletters, magazines, and union yearbooks to articulate the struggles and aspirations of Filipino and other marginalized workers in the United States.

There is some controversy surrounding the accuracy of events recorded within America Is in the Heart. He is celebrated for giving a post-colonial, Asian immigrant perspective to the labor movement in America and for telling the experience of Filipinos working in the U.S. during the 1930s and '40s. In the 1970s, with a resurgence in Asian/Pacific Islander American activism, his unpublished writings were discovered in a library in the University of Washington leading to posthumous releases of several unfinished works and anthologies of his poetry. His other novels include The Laughter of My Father, which were originally published as short sketches, and the posthumously published The Cry and the Dedication which detailed the Hukbalahap Rebellion in the Philippines. One of his most famous essays, published in March 1943, was chosen by The Saturday Evening Post to accompany its publication of the Norman Rockwell painting Freedom from Want, part of a series based on Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" speech. Maxim Lieber was his literary agent in 1944.

• Letter from America (The Press of James A. Decker, 1942) • America Is in the Heart (1946) • The Laughter of My Father (1944) • The Cry and the Dedication (1995) • My Father's Tragedy • The Romance of Magno Rubio • If You Want To Know What We Are • My Father goes to Court

Carlos Bulosan is recorded as poet, novelist, laborer, activist and writer.