Carlos Bulosan on Writing: The Role of Letters

• Main Authors: Alquizola, Marilyn C., Hirabayashi, Lane Ryo
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2024
• Subjects: America Is in the Heart as minor literature; Bulosan’s letters; Carlos Bulosan; Carlos Bulosan on writing and art; political writing; politics and writing
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk/vol1/iss23/10; https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/kk/article/1583/viewcontent/_5BKKv00n23_2014_5D_203.1.2_ForumKritika_ArchivalAnchors_Alquizola_Hirabayashi.pdf
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

Two themes from Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s study, Kafka Toward a Minor Literature, serve as an inspiration for this rumination on Carlos Bulosan’s 1955 letter to Florentino B. Valeros about writing and the responsibilities of the writer. Because Bulosan was an inherently political writer, his correspondence is part-and-parcel of his writing machine, inclusive of his poetry, short stories, novels, and expository essays. In this, Bulosan’s case is parallel to that of Kafka. In contradistinction to Kafka, however, Bulosan’s letters are not easily categorized in terms of thematics such as those Deleuze and Guattari identify in the cases of Kafka and Proust. Because both his life and his cultural production were forged in the heat of struggles for workers’ rights, against racism, and against various manifestations of anti-immigrant, anti-Filipino, and anti-progressive sentiments during his life- time, Bulosan’s correspondence demarks a line of flight that is distinctive from the conventions expressed by other authors in their letters.