Summary of Carlos Bulosan's America Is in the Heart

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 I was the first to see my brother Leon coming through the tall grass in the dry riverbed. He had come a long way. I ran to meet him, and when I saw him, I was shocked. He looked exactly like his picture on the family wall.

#2 I met my brother, who had gone to fight a strange war in Europe, when I was five years old. He had returned to our barrio, in the farming town of Binalonan, on the island of Luzon. The younger generation had become total strangers to the older generation, and they were rebelling against their heritage.

#3 My brother Leon met the girl who became his wife. She came from a poor family in the north, in the province of Ilocos Sur, where the peasants were overcrowded in a narrow barren land. She came to our barrio and hired herself to one of the farmers who had more hectares of land than the others.

#4 I saw my brother Leon, who had already sold one hectare of our land, leave the barrio with his wife to live in another part of Luzon. I had written him that I would pass through his town on my way to Manila, and asked him to stand in front of his house and wait for my bus.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Apr 29, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669398981

IRB Media

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Insights on Carlos Bulosan's America Is in the Heart

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I was the first to see my brother Leon coming through the tall grass in the dry riverbed. He had come a long way. I ran to meet him, and when I saw him, I was shocked. He looked exactly like his picture on the family wall.

#2

I met my brother, who had gone to fight a strange war in Europe, when I was five years old. He had returned to our barrio, in the farming town of Binalonan, on the island of Luzon. The younger generation had become total strangers to the older generation, and they were rebelling against their heritage.

#3

My brother Leon met the girl who became his wife. She came from a poor family in the north, in the province of Ilocos Sur, where the peasants were overcrowded in a narrow barren land. She came to our barrio and hired herself to one of the farmers who had more hectares of land than the others.

#4

I saw my brother Leon, who had already sold one hectare of our land, leave the barrio with his wife to live in another part of Luzon. I had written him that I would pass through his town on my way to Manila, and asked him to stand in front of his house and wait for my bus.

#5

I was left to take care of the farm after my brothers left. I would fill the water trough in the corral and the animals would stop chewing the dry rice stalks. They would anxiously come to the trough and plunge their muzzles into the water.

#6

I was always eager to help my father with the harvest, as I loved the smell of freshly cut grass and the sound of raindrops hitting the earth. I would rush to help them with the harvest, and we would work frantically to get the corn ripened before the rain came.

#7

The sun came out again in September, and we put the strung ears of corn in the yard. The rice was now nearly a foot high above the water, and our animals were fattening in the grazing land.

#8

My family had deprived themselves of any form of leisure and simple luxury so that my brother could finish high school. But even then, my brother Amado was eager to go further, and my father stopped him.

#9

I saw my brother Amado again not long afterward in Binalonan, where I had gone to live with my mother. He was then a janitor at the presidencia, or town hall, and helping