Honoring Filipino-American Month:

When learning about famous writers and activists in America, one name that you probably have not come across is that of Carlos Bulosan, a Filipino-American writer and activist who fought for labor rights in the 1930s and 1940s. As October is Filipino-American History Month, it's time to shed some light on this somewhat obscure, mysterious, and yet utterly inspirational figure in American history.

Bulosan was born in the Pangasinan province of Luzon, located in the Northern region of the Philippines. There is an air of mystery surrounding his date of birth, with some sources claiming that he was born in 1911, while others state that he was born as late as 1919. What is known, however, is that Bulosan grew up in extremely modest conditions, but was still able to attend school in the Philippines, where he learned to speak English. In 1930, at around the age of 17, Bulosan left his home in the Philippines to embark on a life in the United States. Needless to say, finding work was difficult for Bulosan during the Great Depression. After some time, however, he eventually found work as a farmer with his brother in California.

It was around this time that Bulosan's writing career began to take hold. In his early twenties, Bulosan began submitting his poetry to numerous publications in California, and started gaining fame in his local community. In the mid 1930s, Bulosan began work as a writer for the union movement in California, and became one of the key voices for the working class population in the area. As his career as a writer was taking off, his health was beginning to deteriorate rapidly. Between 1936 and 1938, Bulosan became seriously ill with tuberculosis and numerous other ailments. He went through a number of individual surgeries and operations in the following years, one of which included the removal of several of his ribs and part of a diseased lung. While confined to the hospital, Bulosan allegedly read one book a day for over a year, and wrote countless numbers of poems, political essays, short stories, and novels, including what would eventually become his most famous piece, a semi-autobiographical work entitled America Is in the Heart, which he wrote in just 24 days. After leaving the hospital, Bulosan lived in an incredibly weakened state, but still sought to pursue his career as a writer.

One of his biggest accomplishments came during the war years, when the Saturday Evening Post commissioned four essays centered on each of the "Four Freedoms," which highlighted the values that Americans were fighting to preserve in the war. The Post chose Bulosan to write the piece on the "freedom from want," which was accompanied by the Norman Rockwell painting of the same name. This article undoubtedly helped Bulosan's career as a writer, making him internationally recognized as one of the great writers of the time. Perhaps more importantly, however, people universally regarded Bulosan as a true American writer.

Unfortunately, Bulosan's career as a writer was brought to a slower pace during the later years of his life. During the "McCarthy era" in America, the FBI began monitoring Bulosan following a rumor that he was a communist, which was based on his previous involvement with the union movement in California. This rendered Bulosan practically unemployable throughout the late '40s and '50s, a period that proved to be an increasingly difficult time for him. In September of 1956, Carlos Bulosan died of complications from an advanced stage of pneumonia.

So what does Bulosan represent to generations of Filipino Americans today? In many ways, Carlos Bulosan is the epitome of what it means to strive for the American dream. Bulosan was an incredibly gifted individual, who, despite all of the hardships and struggles that he endured in his life, worked hard to gain the recognition that he so deserved. Bulosan describes it best in his own words, which speak volumes about the lives of not just Filipino Americans, but of all Americans from every background.

The following passage is from his seminal novel depicting his own struggles in coming to the United States, titled America is in the Heart: "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."