America is (also) in the Queer Heart Part 1
Contributor Sam Hosea reflects on the Bulosan classic from Queer Filipino American perspective Part 1 of 2.
No one picks up John Steinbeck expecting to read stories from the neo-slave narrative genre (think of Solomon Northup's Twelve Years a Slave or Shirley Anne Williams’ Dessa Rose) or stories from the queer experience (such as The Well of Loneliness by Raddclyffe Hall or Amistead Maupin’s Tales of the City series). When you think of The Grapes of Wrath, some things that might come to mind are the Great Depression; labor rights; the Dust Bowl; and migrant rights — a well-written, rightly lauded, but otherwise straightforward epic of land displacement, the grim power of banks, and the interpersonal relationships between an abruptly uprooted family in search of a new living and new meaning. To be clear: theirs is the story of an abruptly uprooted white family, competing for jobs with other white families.
Literary critics often place America is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan side by side with The Grapes of Wrath. Both novels are set during the Great Depression against the context of displacement. Whereas Steinbeck’s prose is evocatively pastoral, Bulosan deftly navigates between his protagonist’s relationship with the land and relationship with himself. I’m a fat, queer, lighter skinned (but still obviously melanated) Filipino American who was born in Subic Bay and raised in the suburbs of Washington DC. (Although Steinbeck’s regard for non-whites is a perennial source of academic curiosity and controversy, it is an issue beyond the scope of this article.) In reading The Grapes of Wrath, I’m only searching for myself in the abstract: desperately searching for work, anxiety about putting food on the table, and the abject desolation of rootlessness — these are themes that I can relate to and which Steinbeck conveys universally.
I have never read The Grapes of Wrath explicitly in search of queer meaning, let alone attempted to read it through a queer lens. (This is not to say that it is impossible to do those things. But let’s be plain: there isn’t exactly any sociopolitical urgency in queering The Grapes of Wrath.) The first thing that came to mind when I first read The Grapes of Wrath (in high school) is that if I ever met John Steinbeck, he’d be okay with this pudgy, gender-indeterminate Filipino who likes men. And so it was with America is in the Heart: I had the warm sensation that Carlos Bulosan might have welcomed me the way he did the wide variety of friendships he made during his journey through the Philippines and through America.
HOW FILIPINO?
This was my first time reading America is in the Heart. I thought that doing so would be a nice way to kick off Filipino American History Month 2023.
Like many other FilAms, I’m a late bloomer to my culture; many of my friends in high school, for example, did not take an active interest in the language and the traditions of our motherland until young adulthood, and it was mainly because of their lead that I followed in the way of encountering my Filipino-ness. For FilAms like me who were raised Roman Catholic, guilt is an all-too familiar feeling, and guilt is what I felt when I picked up America is in the Heart at 41-years old. Much like Allos, Bulosan’s alter ego in the novel, I was internally torn by warring philosophies of hope and defeat. The hopeful voice in my head was consoling me by explaining that maybe I needed to first live my life up to the age of 41 to appreciate Bulosan’s revered novel; a more dreadful voice was bitterly reminding me of how all my cousins in the Philippines knew virtually the entire life story of José Rizal and had long ago read Noli Me Tángere cover to cover — in other words, mines was the ancient existential crisis of not feeling Filipino enough.
FATHERS AND SONS
Whatever regrets I carried when I opened America is in the Heart quickly dissipated in the face of Bulosan’s engaging prose that introduces the reader to Allos, himself being introduced to his older brother Leon, who he has never met because of their age difference.
Bulosan cinematically sets the scene of a soldier returning home: my own spotty memories of the Philippine countryside effortlessly cohered with one another as Allos recognizes Leon, who Allos has only seen in family pictures, walking across their barrio and toward their family’s plot of land. If there is a queer reading to be deployed here, then it is unintentional and particular: for me, this is a complicated opening scene because of the presence of three males, even if Allos is just a kid. Cisgender heterosexuals, in my lived experience, are not especially attuned to the danger we sense from the conventionally gendered.
My own particulars complicate matters further. As an only child, I have never experienced the bond of having a sibling; and when you’re a Filipino child with no brothers or sisters, your parents place the weight of the world onto you. Yet for me, Allos’ relationship with his father, even in these early paragraphs of the novel, took the form of an elegiac messenger that returned me to my own cherished relationship with my dad when I was Allos’ age.
As America is in the Heart progresses in time and into Allos’ abrupt manhood, his idyllic relationship with his father buckles from the social upheaval rocking the Philippines. In childhood, Allos is an adoring son who closely watches how hard his father works; by adolescence, the times have robbed their family of their land, their home, and their dignity to such degree that the now-older Allos observes his father as “a pathetic little figure in the house” who “only went out when it was absolutely necessary.” When I was young and we were still new to America, my parents worked multiple jobs to make ends meet. I spent most of my time with my dad, who I adored for things like cooking my favorite dish (fried rice and hot dog slices) and bringing home a stack of books from the public library each week for me to read; in adulthood, I have become a caregiver to my father, a once-vibrant man who recently emerged from surviving a stroke only to abruptly become an old, despondent man with no desire for mental health counseling or for living his life beyond sleeping all day or weeping over his teleserye.
Part 1 of 2.
About the Author: Sam Hosea (he/him) is a trans Filipino American pursuing graduate study in theology with concentrations in queer and economic intersectionalities. His writing has appeared in academic publications as well as literary journals such as Forum, the long-running journal of the City College of San Francisco, and Drain. He lives on the east coast.