Background

Carlos Bulosan was born on November 24, 1913 (some sources say 1911), in Binalonan, Pangasinan, Philippines. He was one of several children of farming parents, Simeon Bulosan and Marta Sampayan.

Education

Carlos Bulosan completed only three years of schooling and, drawn to the United States by the promises of wealth and education and the dream of becoming a writer, he followed two older brothers and purchased a steerage ticket to Seattle for seventy-five dollars, arriving on July 22, 1930, while still a teenager.

Career

In the United States, Carlos Bulosan worked in an Alaskan fish cannery and as a fruit and vegetable picker in Washington and California. In 1932, he was published in a poetry anthology. While living with one of his brothers in Los Angeles, he had already submitted articles for small newspapers and had done some writing for The New Tide, a bimonthly Filipino publication. The New Tide was a radical literary magazine that brought Bulosan into a wider circle of fellow writers. By the early 1940s, he was gaining national recognition.

In 1942, he published his first book of poems, Letter from America, and The Voice of Bataan was published the following year. Also in 1943, the Saturday Evening Post commissioned articles on the Four Freedoms, and Bulosan was paid one thousand dollars for "Freedom from Want," an essay that was illustrated in the magazine by the famous artist Norman Rockwell. Stories, poems, and essays by Bulosan began to appear during the early 1940s in magazines such as Town and Country, Harper’s Bazaar, and Poetry. Bulosan’s first collection of stories, The Laughter of My Father, was published in 1944 and was broadcast around the world to American troops fighting in World War II; it soon became a bestseller.

In 1946, Harcourt Brace published America Is in the Heart, which also became popular, but Bulosan’s career was already beginning to falter, in part because of two factors beyond his control. In 1944, he had published a short story, The End of the War, in The New Yorker, and he was accused of plagiarism by another writer. The charges were never proven, but the claim and the publicity it aroused damaged Bulosan’s career.

The 1950s ushered in the anti-Communist fervor of Senator Joe McCarthy and the Un-American Activities Committee. Carlos Bulosan and fellow radicals were "blacklisted" even by some Filipino writers. Bulosan continued his labor union activities and edited the 1952 yearbook of the Union Local 37 International Longshoremen Workers Union (ILWU).

Bulosan wrote other books, including novels, but most of his later works were published posthumously by scholars who went through his papers and assembled individual titles. E. San Juan, Jr., has been responsible for many of these volumes, including The Philippines Is in the Heart: A Collection of Short Stories (1978), On Becoming Filipino: Selected Writings of Carlos Bulosan (1995), and The Cry and the Dedication (historical fiction, 1995), a novel set in the Philippines during and after World War II.

Achievements

• Carlos Bulosan is best remembered for his semi-fictional, semi-autobiographical novel America Is In the Heart - a staple in American Ethnic Studies and Asian American Studies classes. In 2004 the Carlos Bulosan Heritage Center was opened in Queens, New York, in recognition of his struggles and commitment to the Filipino people.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Philippines is in the Heart

    (A posthumous response to his classic America Is in the He...)

    1978
  • All the Conspirators

    (In this mystery thriller set at the end of World War II, ...)

    1998
  • If You Want to Know What We Are: A Carlos Bulosan Reader

    (This volume offers some of Carlos Bulosan's work on the l...)

    1983
  • The Laughter of My Father

    (The rich man’s children ate their good food and grew thin...)

    1944
  • The Voice Of Bataan 1943
  • America Is in the Heart 1946
  • The Power of The People 1977
  • Cry And Dedication 1995

Politics

Between 1935 and 1941, Carlos Bulosan became involved in the labor movement, organizing unions to protect his fellow Filipino workers. In Los Angeles, he met labor organizer Chris Mensalves. Together, they organized the United Cannery and Packing House Workers of America (UCAPHWA).

Personality

Carlos Bulosan loved the public library and reportedly read a book a day, many by the classic authors of American literature, including Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, Theodore Dreiser, and Ernest Hemingway.

Physical Characteristics: Never a healthy man, Carlos Bulosan was diagnosed with tuberculosis in 1936, and he spent the next several years in Los Angeles General Hospital, undergoing surgeries and convalescence.

Quotes from others about the person

• "Of the million Filipinos who found themselves in the United States in the two decades before and after World War II, Carlos Bulosan, his entire life & works, represents the heroic struggles and sacrifices of the Filipino community as a colonized and an emergent national agency in world history." - E. San Juan Jr.

Interests

• reading

Connections

Carlos Bulosan didn't have his own family.

Father:

Simeon Bulosan

Mother:

Marta Sampayan

Brother:

Aurelio Bulosan

Brother:

Jose Bulosan

Friend:

Chris Mensalves

Friend:

Dorothy Babb

References

• Contemporary Authors
  2011