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Chapter 16
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in America Is in the Heart, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Beauty in Despair
Race and American Identity
Education vs. Ignorance
Poverty
Summary
Analysis
After leaving Amado, Carlos makes his way to Los Angeles to find his brother Macario. In the city’s Mexican district, he is at first unable to find anyone he knows, so he finds a quiet church in which to sleep. The next day he searches for Macario in the Filipino district. In a pool hall, two police officers enter and shoot a young Filipino man in cold blood. The officers seem unaffected by the murder, and a bystander tells Carlos that “they often shoot Pinoys like that.” Disturbed by the murder, Carlos nonetheless becomes excited when Macario enters the room. Macario is surprised to see Carlos in America, and, like Amado, Macario calls him Carlos, rather his family nickname, “Allos.”
The banality of yet another senseless murder of a Filipino man demonstrates how violence is a central component of the Filipino experience in America. That two police detectives commit the murder only further emphasizes how racism is thoroughly baked into the American system of justice. Once again, however, Carlos finds relief from such turmoil in the form of family when he meets Macario.
Themes
The brothers make their way to the hotel where Macario is staying. In the hotel room people are throwing a wedding party. Carlos counts “three American girls” and “ten Filipinos.” Macario introduces Carlos to his friends. At bedtime, Carlos is embarrassed when an orgy begins, so he and Macario head outside for a long walk. They try to talk, but the years and their different paths have caused them to grow apart. Carlos worries that the brutality he is witnessing in America is hindering his ability to express feelings of love and affection. That morning, they return to the hotel room, where Carlos meets Macario’s roommates.
Carlos’s night in Macario’s hotel room forces him to witness an orgy among the various members of the wedding party. This is the first, but not the last, act of public sexual activity that Carlos encounters, and he consistently reacts with disgust. Bulosan frequently depicts promiscuous sexual activity as a symptom of the poverty and racism that Filipino people experience in America. The tragedy of discrimination, according to Bulosan, is that it takes something beautiful, like sexual relations between two people, and utterly degrades it into a cheap and sometimes violent act.
Themes
Among Macario’s many roommates are a pair of brothers, Nick and curly-haired José, who had to drop out of college when the Depression hit. Mariano, another roommate, was an agent for a now-failed clothing company. Victor and Manuel are both former apartment house workers. Luz is a recent transplant from the countryside, while the jovial Gazamen likes to play music on his phonograph. Leon sells tickets in a dance hall, and he is the only hotel resident with a job. He dies in the middle of the next night. Alonzo is a college student, and Ben is a house worker in Beverly Hills who spends his money as quickly as he makes it. Carlos thinks that Macario lives “in a strange world” characterized by a “desperate cynicism.” He wonders if there is hope for these Filipinos, who are “revolting against American society in this debased form.”
Macario’s roommates come from various backgrounds, but they are united by their status as lost souls who struggle on the margins of American society. The “strange world” that Carlos sees Macario living in is, in fact, a world in which an entire population of people is forced by social restrictions to abide by different rules that do not apply to white Americans. Though Carlos describes Macario’s roommates as revolting against American society in a “debased” way, they are understandably trying to find any solace and survival they can in a society that despises them.
Themes
