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Chapter 23
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
Overjoyed by his newfound writing ability, Carlos wants to read as many books as he can by “the men that contributed something positive to society” so that he can emulate them. He locates the home of Max’s wife and knocks on the door. A white woman answers, lets him in, and offers him port wine. She gives Carlos the nickname “Carl” and introduces him to her sickly Filipino husband, Pascual. Carlos learns that the couple edits a small socialist newspaper.
In Bulosan’s novel, books are an important symbol of overcoming ignorance. Here, however, books also become a key source of beauty in Carlos’s life, as they illuminate his path towards intellectual maturity. The new opportunity to write for Pascual’s newspaper also represents the first time in his life where Carlos is able to work doing something he loves to do, namely, to write.
Themes
At the home, Carlos also reunites with Gazamen and José, and the latter has started an independent union for Filipino agricultural workers. Carlos begins working as an editor for Pascual’s newspaper, and though the paper makes barely any money, the work inspires in Carlos a “passion for abstract, universal ideas.”
Learning to read and write English begins an entirely new chapter in Carlos’s life. Whereas he previously worked merely to survive, he now begins working in the service of bigger ideas that he believes can help him make a positive contribution to the world.
Themes
As Carlos and José solicit advertisements for the newspaper, José introduces Carlos to a Japanese girl named Chiye. They get drunk and go fishing with her, then they rent a cabin for the night. When Chiye reveals that she is married, however, the three part ways and Carlos and José return to Pascual’s house. The pea pickers in Prismo Beach are on strike, so Carlos and Lucille, another of the newspaper’s employees, print out pro-strike leaflets for distribution to local businesses. José is arrested but released from jail soon after. He tells Carlos that “this is a war between labor and capital,” but for Filipinos, it is also an “assertion of our right to be human beings again.” José then tells Carlos his life story, to which Carlos can relate.
Carlos’s time working for Pascual and Lucille introduces him to the organized labor movement and all of the potential and pitfalls that it brings. In addition, joining the union movement forges stronger bonds between Carlos and José, as José teaches Carlos about the conflict between labor and capital. Though the connection isn’t yet clear to him at this point, Carlos eventually comes to recognize this conflict as the same one that pits peasants against plantation owners in the Philippines.
Themes
