Bulosan, Carlos

Filipino American author, poet, migrant farm worker, and laborer; b. 1911; d. 1956.

Filipino-American writer, poet, and labor reformer Carlos Bulosan (1911-1956) was active in California and Washington State as an advocate for improving the conditions of migrant workers from the mid-1930s to mid-1940s, but is perhaps best known as the author of America is in the Heart (1946).

Born in the Philippines (in Mangusmana, a small village in Pangasinan Province, Luzon Island), he began working as a day laborer at the age of eleven, after having received only three years of formal schooling. In hopes of a better life, Bulosan decided to immigrate to the United States, where he immediately encountered racial discrimination and harsh working conditions. Soon after his initial arrival in Seattle (in 1930 or 1931), he was forced to work at an Alaskan fish cannery for low wages. At the end of the season, he returned to Washington and became a migrant farm worker in Eastern Washington and California. During the years 1935-1941, he attempted to organize migrant workers into unions and began to write about their conditions, particularly those of Filipino Americans. Bulosan, who had published a poem in an anthology in 1932 and written for local newspapers and literary magazines, began to write more prolifically during a two-year stay at Los Angeles General Hospital for treatment of tuberculosis that began in 1936. During the 1940s, he began to receive more attention for his writings, which included two collections of poems, Letter from America (1942) and The Voice of Bataan (1943). The Laughter of My Father (1944), a set of short stories, further enhanced Bulosan's reputation as a writer and became a surprise bestseller. It was followed up by America is in the Heart (1946), a semi-autobiographical account of the Filipino immigrant experience. Plagued by ill heath, Bulosan wrote very little during the last ten years of his life and was blacklisted for his political activities during the 1950s. Following his death from pneumonia, Bulosan was buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle; in 1982, an elaborate monument was erected in his honor at his grave.