SOUND OF FALLING LIGHT, PAGES 264–66
CB TO DOROTHY BABB
21 March 1953
Firland Sanatorium
Seattle, Washington
Dear D:
Your note came and I was happy to hear from you, but sorry you are still suffering from the old illnesses. Human life could truly be paradise, in many respects, if the money spent for destruction were used for the elimination of disease, schools propagating tolerance, factories for necessary consumer goods, and research centers, clinics, hospitals, maternity wards, etc. In fact, we should have a Department of Peace in the cabinet, instead of a Department of War. Hate, greed, selfishness—these are not human nature. These are weapons of destruction evolved by generations of experimenters in the service of ruling groups, be it a tribe, a clan, a prince, a king, a democracy. These destructive elements have finally become so subtle, so intricate, so deeply rooted in men’s minds in our time, the era of international finance, that many people sincerely, though ignorantly, believe them to be the guiding forces of nature. Love, kindness, pity, tolerance, happiness, beauty, truth—these are the real human nature from which a galaxy of other relevant virtues spring, take root and flourish in manifold form; in what we call brotherhood or common humanity, as the ideal of honest men in the world.
And because of this cultivated ability, plus my enduring fidelity to enduring human virtues and their amplitudes in our everyday life, I can clearly see my place in the vast panorama of human struggle. What is this struggle? To live a little longer with the minimum of pain, close to each other in peace, and to contribute what we can toward the elevation of the human spirit. So short, so brief, so little is the infinite flame of life in all its forms—this is our life on this planet. Why do we hate and kill each other when we are going to die sooner or later? Where are the conquerors of yesteryears?
There is consolation in Poetry, and also inspiration. But not in cynicism. Our technological achievement in America was so sudden and rapid that we had no time to create a sort of mythology as the basis of our cultural fund. And in our mad scramble for power, success and wealth, we lost or destroyed our national totem, that dynamic symbol of ancestral unity against the omnipresence of nature.
The family—that super-structure of civilization, that common spring of all human ideals—is gone, is on the market, is for sale to the highest bidder. And gone is love; sweet, dear love is gone. The love that makes you cry because it is so beautiful and good is gone for a long time from our land; and what we have [in] our hearts is only a memory, a sad and painful reminder that it once upon a time bound men and women, and moved the world somehow to the pathway of the everlasting stars and heaven. See—I make myself cry because I know what is lost, and I know that in order to regain it, we who are alive must give up our individual ambitions and comforts—our lives even—for generations to come on the very earth that we have befouled with greed, selfishness, hate and intolerance.
I was going to suggest a few books for you to read, so you will regain your foothold and rediscover your faith in man. But now when I write anything I am always propelled by the main forces of life and society. However, these are the books:
(1) Revolt in the Backlands by de [da] Cunha (Brazil), (2) Independent People by Halldor Laxaness [Laxness] (Iceland), (3) Pelle the Conqueror by Martin Anderson-Nexo [Andersen Nexo] (Denmark), (4) Giants of [in] the Earth by O.D. [O. E.] Rolvaag (Sweden [Norway]), (5) Raintree County by Ross Lockridge (USA), (6) Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe (USA), (7) Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (France), (8) Blood Wedding by Federico Garcia Lorca (Spain), (9) Time and the Wind by Erico Virressnio [Verissimo] (Brazil), (10) The Silent Don by Mikhail Sholokhov (USSR).
These are good books, perhaps some are great books, for they make you realize the heroism of man to make the world a better, happier place. They lift up the spirit and make you proud to be a part of the human race, to share in man’s dignity.
Best regards.
Always,
CB
SOUND OF FALLING LIGHT, PAGES 271–72
CB TO FLORENTINO B. VALEROS
17 January 1955
Seattle, Washington
Dear Florentino:
Your letter was forwarded to me here. Let me explain my presence in Seattle. Two years ago I was hired to edit the Yearbook of the ILWU Local 37. This union was founded by Filipino cannery and farm workers during the depression to better their conditions. Today the fight is somewhat shifted to the fight for civil rights and liberties. Officers and members of the union were being arrested for deportation under the Smith Act and the Walter-McCarren [McCarren-Walter] Act; hundreds of others were intimidated. But through this union’s appeal, a new ruling of the Supreme Court states that Filipinos are not deportable, no matter what crime they have committed, so long as they came to this country as permanent residents before the passage of the Philippine Independence Act.
However, they can still be deported under the Walter-McCarren Act if they have gone to Alaska. This piece of legislation considers Alaska, where Filipinos work in the salmon canneries every summer, a foreign country. Therefore, according to this law, if a Filipino has committed any of the crimes mentioned in it, or is an alcoholic, or has been an inmate of a mental institution, or a public charge, and therefore indigent, he is deportable. The Union is at present fighting this law. We have a test case before the Supreme Court. But I have every reason to believe that we will win the case. And if we do, we shall again go to the Supreme Court to clarify and define the status of Filipinos in the United States.
But let me go back to the Yearbook. The day it came off the press I was rushed to a sanatorium where I was confined for one year. I have been in a few hospitals and every time I came out a major organ had been left behind for the doctors to play with. And this time it was my left kidney . . .
My making as a writer and poet is not mysterious, nor was I gifted by an unknown power. It was hard work and hard living. Suffering, loneliness, pain, hunger, hate, joy, happiness, pity, compassion—all of these factors made me a writer. Plus, of course, my tenderness, my affection toward everything that lives.
Some writers are reluctant to reveal what writers influenced them. I have probably read most of the greatest novels, plays, short stories, poetry by many writers from many nations, but those who influenced me most are Americans, British, and Russians. In particular, Balzac, Jack London, and Maxim Gorky: but mostly Gorky in the novel and the drama; Nicolas Guillen and Pablo Neruda in poetry, and the Marxists in literary criticism.
I don’t care what some writers in the Philippines think of me. That is their privilege. But I care about what they write: for or against war, for or against life.
In the biographical dictionaries and Who’s Who, the following is used as the date of my birth: November 24, 1914.
Good luck and best wishes.
Sincerely,
CB
Suggestions for Further Exploration
ADDITIONAL WORKS BY CARLOS BULOSAN
All the Conspirators. Introduced by Caroline Hau and Benedict Anderson. Manila: Anvil, 1998.
Bulosan: An Introduction with Selections. Edited by E. San Juan, Jr. Manila: National Book Store, 1983.
Carlos Bulosan and His Poetry: A Biography and Anthology. Edited by Susan Evangelista. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1985.
The Cry and the Dedication. Introduced and edited by E. San Juan, Jr. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995.
If You Want to Know What We Are. Edited by E. San Juan, Jr. Albuquerque, NM: West End Press, 1983.
The Laughter of My Father. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1944.
On Becoming Filipino: Selected Writings of Carlos Bulosan. Edited by E. San Juan, Jr. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995.
The Philippines Is in the Heart. Edited by E. San Juan, Jr. Quezon City: New Day, 197
8.
The Power of Money and Other Stories. Manila: Kalikasan Press, 1990.
Selected Works and Letters. Edited by E. San Juan, Jr., and Ninotchka Rosca. Honolulu: Friends of the Filipino People, 1982.
Writings of Carlos Bulosan. Edited by E. San Juan, Jr. Special issue of Amerasia Journal 6, no. 1 (May 1979).
CONTEXTUALIZING BULOSAN: AT THE INTERSECTION OF LITERATURE AND POLITICS
Anthologies, Bibliographies, Essays, History
Alquizola, Marilyn, and Lane Ryo Hirabayashi. “Carlos Bulosan on Writing: The Role of Letters,” Forum Kritika: Reflections on Carlos Bulosan and Becoming Filipino, ed. Jeffrey Arellano Cabusao. Kritika Kultura 23 (2014): 168–88.
Alquizola, Marilyn, and Lane Ryo Hirabayashi. “Carlos Bulosan’s Final Defiant Acts: Achievements During the McCarthy Era.” Amerasia Journal 38, no. 3 (2012): 29–50.
Baldoz, Rick. “‘Comrade Carlos Bulosan’: U.S. State Surveillance and the Cold War Suppression of Filipino Radicals.” Asia-Pacific Journal 11, no. 33 (August 18, 2014): 1–18.
Cabusao, Jeffrey Arellano, ed. Writer in Exile/Writer in Revolt: Critical Perspectives on Carlos Bulosan. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2016.
Campomanes, Oscar, and Todd Gernes. “Two Letters from America: Carlos Bulosan and the Act of Writing,” Writer in Exile/Writer in Revolt: Critical Perspectives on Carlos Bulosan, ed. Jeffrey Arellano Cabusao. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2016, 163–95.
Cheung, King-Kok, and Stan Yogi. Asian American Literature: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1988.
Cruz, Rene Ciria, Cindy Domingo, and Bruce Occena, eds. A Time to Rise: Collective Memoirs of the Union of Democratic Filipinos (KDP). Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017.
Denning, Michael. The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century. New York: Verso, 1996.
De Vera, Arleen. “Without Parallel: The Local 7 Deportation Cases, 1949–1955.” Amerasia Journal 20, no. 2 (1994): 1–25.
Espiritu, Augusto Fauni. Five Faces of Exile: The Nation and Filipino American Intellectuals. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005.
Feria, Dolores Stephens. Project Sea Hawk: The Barbed Wire Journal. Baguio City and Quezon City, Philippines: Paper Tigers and Circle Publications, 1993.
Feria, Dolores Stephens. Red Pencil/Blue Pencil. Manila: Kalikasan Press, 1991.
Feria, Dolores Stephens. ed. Sound of Falling Light: Letters in Exile. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1960.
Feria, Monica. “Writers and Exile: Carlos Bulosan and Dolores Stephens Feria,” Forum Kritika: Reflections on Carlos Bulosan and Becoming Filipino, ed. Jeffrey Arellano Cabusao. Kritika Kultura 23 (2014): 189–209.
Ignacio, Abe, Enrique de la Cruz, Jorge Emmanuel, and Helen Toribio. The Forbidden Book: The Philippine-American War in Political Cartoons. San Francisco: T’Boli, 2004.
Mabalon, Dawn Bohulano. Little Manila Is in the Heart: The Making of the Filipina/o American Community in Stockton, California. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013.
Ponce, Martin Joseph. Beyond the Nation: Diasporic Filipino Literature and Queer Reading. New York: New York University Press, 2012.
San Juan, E., Jr. “Carlos Bulosan: Critique and Revolution,” Writer in Exile/Writer in Revolt: Critical Perspectives on Carlos Bulosan, ed. Jeffrey Arellano Cabusao. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2016, 283–321.
San Juan, E., Jr. Carlos Bulosan and the Imagination of the Class Struggle. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1972.
San Juan, E., Jr. Carlos Bulosan: Revolutionary Filipino Writer in the United States: A Critical Appraisal. New York: Peter Lang, 2017.
San Juan, E., Jr. The Philippine Temptation: Dialectics of Philippines-U.S. Literary Relations. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996.
Scharlin, Craig, and Lilia Villanueva. Philip Vera Cruz: A Personal History of Filipino Immigrants and the Farmworkers Movement, 3rd ed. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011.
Schirmer, Daniel B., and Stephen Rosskamm Shalom, eds. The Philippines Reader: A History of Colonialism, Neocolonialism, Dictatorship, and Resistance. Boston: South End Press, 1987.
Shaw, Angel Velasco, and Luis H. Francia, eds. Vestiges of War: The Philippine-American War and the Aftermath of an Imperial Dream 1899–1999. New York: New York University Press, 2002.
FILMS
Amigo. Directed by John Sayles. Anarchist’s Convention, July 14, 2010.
The Delano Manongs: Forgotten Heroes of the United Farm Workers. Directed by Marissa Aroy. Media Factory, June 12, 2014.
Dollar a Day, Ten Cents a Dance. Directed by Geoffrey Dunn, Mark Schwartz. Impact Productions/Center for Asian American Media, 1984.
ONLINE RESOURCES
Author, Poet, and Worker: The World of Carlos Bulosan. University of Washington. https://content.lib.washington.edu/exhibits/bulosan/final.html
The Philippines Matrix Project. E. San Juan, Jr. https://philcsc.wordpress.com
Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project. University of Washington. Filipino Cannery Unionism Across Three Generations 1930s–1980s. https://depts.washington.edu/civilr/Cannery_intro.htm
JEFFREY ARELLANO CABUSAO
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America Is in the Heart Page 37