Will I love America Is in the Heart?

I recommend this book because it is a no-holds-barred narrative of what it is like to be a male agricultural laborer in 1920s racially segregated America.

It is a gritty tale of how a mostly male migrant population survived racial discrimination and economic hardship, living in the labor camps and working for a dollar a day. It shows how these men found ways to cope and acquire dignity even while experiencing loneliness since it was difficult to find brides (due to anti-miscegenation laws). From dressing up in $100 tailor-made suits and smoking cigars to paying ten cents a dance at… show more.

A Filipino immigrant to the U.S. when he was just a teenager, a migrant laborer who experienced the depths of the Great Depression, and a self-taught creative writer, Carlos Bulosan exemplifies the limits and possibilities of the American Dream.

I love his autobiographical debut novel because its prose is both grittily realistic yet lyrically stunning because it opens up so many specific places and stories from 1930s America yet speaks to universal emotions and ideals, and because it ends with the single most inspiring vision of our nation that I’ve ever found.