Carlos Bulosan

Carlos Sampayan Bulosan (November 24, 1913 – September 11, 1956) was a Filipino-American novelist and poet who immigrated to the United States on July 1, 1930. Through The New Tide, Bulosan promoted themes of social justice, anti-colonial struggle, and solidarity among working-class communities. There he was hired to edit the 1952 Yearbook for International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 37.

During the 1940s and 1950s, Bulosan expanded his activism as a journalist for the ILWU. His articles and reports in union publications addressed Filipino migrant labor conditions and supported multiracial worker solidarity along the Pacific Coast. His visibility as a union writer led to FBI surveillance during the early Cold War years, when he was considered a “dangerous subversive.” Despite these pressures, Bulosan continued to use newsletters, magazines, and union yearbooks to articulate the struggles and aspirations of Filipino and other marginalized workers in the United States.

Writing There is some controversy surrounding the accuracy of events recorded within America Is in the Heart. He is celebrated for giving a post-colonial, Asian immigrant perspective to the labor movement in America and for telling the experience of Filipinos working in the U.S. during the 1930s and '40s. In the 1970s, with a resurgence in Asian/Pacific Islander American activism, his unpublished writings were discovered in a library in the University of Washington leading to posthumous releases of several unfinished works and anthologies of his poetry.

His other novels include The Laughter of My Father, which were originally published as short sketches, and the posthumously published The Cry and the Dedication which detailed the Hukbalahap Rebellion in the Philippines.

One of his most famous essays, published in March 1943, was chosen by The Saturday Evening Post to accompany its publication of the Norman Rockwell painting Freedom from Want, part of a series based on Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" speech. Maxim Lieber was his literary agent in 1944.

Death and legacy

As a labor organizer and socialist writer, he was blacklisted during the Second Red Scare of the 1950s. Denied a means to provide for himself, his later years were of illness, hardship, and alcoholism. He died in Seattle suffering from malnutrition and an advanced stage of bronchopneumonia. He is buried at Mount Pleasant Cemetery on Queen Anne Hill in Seattle.

Upon his death, union leader Chris Mensalvas, wrote the following obituary: "Carlos Bulosan, 30 years old (sic), died 11 September 1956, Seattle. Birthplace: Philippines, Address: Unknown; Occupation: Writer; Hobby: Famous for his jungle salad served during Foreign-Born Committee dinners. Estate: One typewriter, a twenty-year old suit, unfinished manuscripts, worn out sock; Finances: Zero. Beneficiary: His people." and was created by Eliseo Art Silva.

In 2018, the Bulosan Center for Filipino Studies Initiative was established at the University of California, Davis to carry on his legacy of activism through research and advocacy of the Filipino and Filipino-American community. The initiative backs the creation of a physical Bulosan Center for Filipino Studies to support research, education and advocacy. The center aims to continue Bulosan's legacy by uplifting the voices of the most marginalized in the Filipino community in the United States and the diaspora through community-engaged research and broadly disseminating knowledge about Filipinos for the purpose of advancing their rights and welfare.

Works Letter from America (The Press of James A. Decker, 1942) America Is in the Heart (1946) The Laughter of My Father (1944) The Cry and the Dedication (1995) My Father's Tragedy The Romance of Magno Rubio If You Want To Know What We Are My Father goes to Court