America Is in the Heart, sometimes (albeit infrequently) called America Is in the Heart: A Personal History is a semi-autobiographical novel written by the Filipino-American author, immigrant, and activist Carlos Bulosan, originally published in 1946. Despite the author's original Filipino nationality, the book was initially written in English and was not translated into many other languages.
The book is about Bulosan's life both in the Philippines and in the United States of America, as a foreigner. He starts by describing his adolescence in the Philippines, and how he lived on his dad's ranch and tended it regularly, plowing. He additionally recounts a portion of the difficulties that he had, the most noticeable of which was his separated family driving him to pawn off the land at amazingly inferior costs. After this, however, Bulosan reviews his migration to America in 1930, and how he was promptly confronted with separation and partiality towards him while he was a work laborer in California
America Is in the Heart has received praise from critics as being one of the first and most blatant accounts of immigration from the Asian-American viewpoint. Along with that, the novel is one of the only accounts of the Filipino immigration experience in America and is widely considered to be among the greatest. The novel was even called a "social classic" by Carey McWilliams in the introductory essay to his own book, Factories in the Field.
The novel has been widely praised for its insight into the Filipino-American experience and has been used as a source of inspiration for many Filipino-American people. The novel has also been used as a source of knowledge for those who are interested in learning more about Filipino-American culture, as well as a way to understand the struggles of immigrants in the United States. Additionally, the novel has been used as a source of inspiration for many Filipino-American writers, including Jessica Hagedorn, who has said that America Is in the Heart was one of the inspirations for her novel, Dogeaters.
