An Ethical Revaluation of Carlos Bulosan’s America Is in the Heart

• Main Author: Sollano, Francis C
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2019
• Subjects: brotherhood; Carlos Bulosan; ethical literary criticism; Filipino family; Filipino values
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/english-faculty-pubs/28; http://www.fwls.org/Download/2020/0201/309.html
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

Carlos Bulosan’s America Is in the Heart captures the struggle of Filipino peasants in the United States. Even at the wake of the “American century,” when globalization has taken the façade of a US neocolonial capitalist ethos to the disenfranchisement people in the diaspora and the Global South, the novel continues to be socially relevant. This paper is a revaluation of Bulosan’s classic novel from an ethical literary perspective by focusing on the relationship between the internal and external worlds of Allos/Carlos and his brothers, especially Macario. Without neglecting the context and informed by Bulosan scholarship, the paper argues that Allos’s brotherly feeling toward Macario and his brothers is the primary condition and drive for his social and ethical self-making and search for “America.” The paper also argues that an ethical literary perspective will further highlight new themes and meanings in Bulosan’s other multi-genre works.