The Words of Carlos Bulosan

America is not a land of one race or one class of men. We are all Americans that have toiled and suffered and known oppression and defeat, from the first Indian that offered peace in Manhattan to the last Filipino pea pickers. America is not bound by geographical latitudes. America is not merely a land or an institution. America is in the hearts of men that died for freedom; it is also in the eyes of men that are building a new world. America is a prophecy of a new society of men: of a system that knows no sorrow or strife or suffering. America is a warning to those who would try to falsify the ideas of free men.

America is also the nameless foreigner, the homeless refugee, the hungry boy begging for a job and the black body dangling from a tree. America is the illiterate immigrant who is ashamed that the world of books and intellectual opportunities is closed to him. We are 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!

– Excerpt from America is in the Heart

Song for Chris Mensalvas Birthday

How many years did we fight the Beast together,
You in your violent way, in your troublous world,
I in my quiet way, with songs of love?

Over the years we fought apart and together,
Scarring our lives, breaking our hearts,
For the shining heart of a heartless world:

For the nameless multitude in our beautiful land,
For the worker and the unemployed,
For the colored and the foreign born:

And we won, we will win,
Because we for truth, for beauty, for life,
We fight for the splendor of love…

They are afraid, my brother,
They are afraid of our mighty fists, my brother,
They are afraid of the magnificence of our works, my brother,
They are even afraid of our songs of love, my brother.

So on this day of your birthday,
I am happy that the glissando of time has compacted,
At last,
Our early promises in that faraway city of our youth,
That I alone can totally remember,
That I alone can destroy with stroke of my hand:
So joy to your world and all that lives in it,
Joy, joy to your coming years,
Joy to your unrelenting heart and mind,
Joy to your brown hands that suffered so much,
More than mine did, having suffered another terror,
The terror of the mirroring soul:
Joy to your wife,
Joy to your children,
Joy to your friends,
Joy, joy, joy,
Joy to all the world,
And for all this joy let me have one little joy
To guide my mind that remembers her always,
The quiet little one that moved my heart
To remember, always to remember, the song of love…

They are afraid, my brother,
They are afraid of our mighty fists, my brother,
They are afraid of the magnificence of our works, my brother,
They are even afraid of our songs of love, my brother.