America Is In The Heart: Again
God Bless: a most heavenly shout out from above to Trisha Ramos. Happy Birthday!
Feelin: :-/
phew! that's a hefty reading load for the weekend, eh?
anyhoot, just got back from theatre rice rehearsals. i hope you guys can come check out the show!
THEATRE RICE!
(a modern Asian-American sketch-comedy (a la Saturday Night Live) / improv (a la Whose Line Is It Anyway?) team
Friday March 4, 7 pm
Satuday March 5, 5:30 pm
155 Dwinelle
$2-5 pay-what-you-can
profits go to charity
tickets available at table on Sproul
anyways, on with the show!
…
Yeah, I’m running out of things to comment on. Well, I guess a good place to start is the video we watched in class, Dollar a Day, Dime a Dance. The interviews and testimonials helped put a face on the anecdotes Bulosan provides in America Is In The Heart. It’s funny to think that those old men in the video, with their weathered faces and the secret memories they hide in their smiles, were the same young men that labored in the fields, that left all sentiments of home across the Pacific, that got-down in the dancehalls and got up every day to repeat the same routine. I hope I have stories like them to tell when I am an old lolo.
Random:
Carlos Bulosan would rank varsity; that is, if farming were deemed an athletic event. Indeed so, for Bulosan was a farmer in the truest sense. He planted the seeds of a labor movement. He planted a prayer for something more than gaudy prostitutes and ghettoes and gambling dens. He planted hope for a bona fide land of the free, an architecture of an ideal America he had learned of in school but had constructed in his heart. He planted all these, willing them to bear fruit, confronting the question of the Filipino’s place in the United States of America. It was a question that haunted all Filipino immigrants, and it is a stubborn question that lingers still--a bitter after-taste in the minds of their Filipino-American descendants.
Bulosan launches into a veritable sermon on the true meaning of America without waiting for the backup choir to kick in with “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” For pages 189 to 189, Bulosan might as well be talking from atop a soapbox. I think these two pages constitute the meat of this novel/autobiography. Beyond the prostitutes and pool halls and gambling dens lies Bulosan’s message—that, despite the horrors and violence he endures, the architecture of an ideal America is safe and sound in his heart. Bulosan’s America is all-inclusive:
“We are all that nameless foreigner, that homeless refugee, that hungry boy, that illiterate immigrant and that lynched black body. All of us, from the first Adams to the last Filipino, native born or alien, educated or illiterate—We are America!”.
But is he foolishly faithful to an America that doesn’t reciprocate his love?
It all reminds me of something my grandma says: “I may live like a Filipino, but I am American because I am free.”
More Random:
I can’t recall the page it occurs on, but there’s gotta be some irony in the moment when an aspiring writer proclaims to Bulosan, “I will be the first acclaimed Filipino American writer!” (or something like that). Those are words to die by. It’s like horror movie characters saying “I’ll be right back!” Or Jasmine Trias—God bless her—saying “I’m here because I’m the next American Idol!” Or any of us saying “I think I did alright” while walking out of a midterm. It’s called a jinx.
And regarding the role of women in the novel:
I’m not sure. :-/ In the video we watched in class, the manongs often mentioned that women were a catalyst for community and brotherhood—they brought everyone together. In this novel, though, women (the strikebreaker witch comes to mind) prevent coalitions from forming.
There is also the occasional girl that reminds Bulosan of qualities he associates with his mother and sisters. I don’t know how this plays into everything—I’m pretty dense. L
Okay, time to go cry over all the work that needs to be done.
Feelin: :-/
phew! that's a hefty reading load for the weekend, eh?
anyhoot, just got back from theatre rice rehearsals. i hope you guys can come check out the show!
THEATRE RICE!
(a modern Asian-American sketch-comedy (a la Saturday Night Live) / improv (a la Whose Line Is It Anyway?) team
Friday March 4, 7 pm
Satuday March 5, 5:30 pm
155 Dwinelle
$2-5 pay-what-you-can
profits go to charity
tickets available at table on Sproul
anyways, on with the show!
…
Yeah, I’m running out of things to comment on. Well, I guess a good place to start is the video we watched in class, Dollar a Day, Dime a Dance. The interviews and testimonials helped put a face on the anecdotes Bulosan provides in America Is In The Heart. It’s funny to think that those old men in the video, with their weathered faces and the secret memories they hide in their smiles, were the same young men that labored in the fields, that left all sentiments of home across the Pacific, that got-down in the dancehalls and got up every day to repeat the same routine. I hope I have stories like them to tell when I am an old lolo.
Random:
Carlos Bulosan would rank varsity; that is, if farming were deemed an athletic event. Indeed so, for Bulosan was a farmer in the truest sense. He planted the seeds of a labor movement. He planted a prayer for something more than gaudy prostitutes and ghettoes and gambling dens. He planted hope for a bona fide land of the free, an architecture of an ideal America he had learned of in school but had constructed in his heart. He planted all these, willing them to bear fruit, confronting the question of the Filipino’s place in the United States of America. It was a question that haunted all Filipino immigrants, and it is a stubborn question that lingers still--a bitter after-taste in the minds of their Filipino-American descendants.
Bulosan launches into a veritable sermon on the true meaning of America without waiting for the backup choir to kick in with “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” For pages 189 to 189, Bulosan might as well be talking from atop a soapbox. I think these two pages constitute the meat of this novel/autobiography. Beyond the prostitutes and pool halls and gambling dens lies Bulosan’s message—that, despite the horrors and violence he endures, the architecture of an ideal America is safe and sound in his heart. Bulosan’s America is all-inclusive:
“We are all that nameless foreigner, that homeless refugee, that hungry boy, that illiterate immigrant and that lynched black body. All of us, from the first Adams to the last Filipino, native born or alien, educated or illiterate—We are America!”.
But is he foolishly faithful to an America that doesn’t reciprocate his love?
It all reminds me of something my grandma says: “I may live like a Filipino, but I am American because I am free.”
More Random:
I can’t recall the page it occurs on, but there’s gotta be some irony in the moment when an aspiring writer proclaims to Bulosan, “I will be the first acclaimed Filipino American writer!” (or something like that). Those are words to die by. It’s like horror movie characters saying “I’ll be right back!” Or Jasmine Trias—God bless her—saying “I’m here because I’m the next American Idol!” Or any of us saying “I think I did alright” while walking out of a midterm. It’s called a jinx.
And regarding the role of women in the novel:
I’m not sure. :-/ In the video we watched in class, the manongs often mentioned that women were a catalyst for community and brotherhood—they brought everyone together. In this novel, though, women (the strikebreaker witch comes to mind) prevent coalitions from forming.
There is also the occasional girl that reminds Bulosan of qualities he associates with his mother and sisters. I don’t know how this plays into everything—I’m pretty dense. L
Okay, time to go cry over all the work that needs to be done.
posted by The Kenneth @ 5:49 PM
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