Authors like John Steinbeck and Henry Miller are key figures of the Central Coast’s literary legacy, but there’s another 20th-century writer who a local historian says deserves more recognition: Filipino novelist Carlos Bulosan.
Bulosan arrived in California during the Great Depression, traveling through Central Coast cities like San Luis Obispo, Pismo Beach and Lompoc.
His experiences with racism, migrant labor and leftist politics during this time eventually became central themes in his work. His 1946 novel “America is in the Heart” has since become a landmark text in Asian-American literature.
Jonathan van Harmelen is a Ph.D candidate at UC Santa Cruz specializing in Asian-American history.
“‘America in the Heart’ [is] basically an autobiography of his life,” he said of Bulosan's seminal novel.
Van Harmelen is from the Central Coast, and said Bulosan’s novel set in this area illustrates the complex history of Asian-American identity in the region.
“There's been some stuff, but a lot that still needs to be said about Asian-Americans and how they've shaped, for example, the definition of citizenship in the United States and how they've shaped U.S. culture as a whole.”
“America is in the Heart” details Bulosan’s struggles as an immigrant worker in the Central Coast during the mid-20th century, facing discrimination and poverty.
“Lompoc was probably one of the places he stayed in longest out of the Central Coast cities. Lompoc was very much divided in terms of segregation: you had Filipinos living in one part of the city, and then you had white residents in another part of the city, and Filipinos that were living in Lompoc worked in usually menial jobs,” he said.
However, van Harmelen said another Central Coast city, San Luis Obispo, was the setting of an empowering moment for Bulosan in the novel, when he sits down at a local hotel with a bottle of wine and realizes he can write in English.
Bulosan writes, “It came to me like a revelation, that I could actually write understandable English. I was seized with happiness. I wrote slowly and boldly, drinking the wine when I started laughing silently and crying. When the long letter was finished, a letter which was actually a story of my life, I jumped to my feet and shouted through my tears, ‘They can’t silence me anymore. I’ll tell the world what they have done to me.'”
Van Harmelen said he feels Bulosan’s work deserves more recognition from people on the Central Coast.
“It’s a book that did have a significant impact when it came out, and also [is] having an ongoing impact with Asian-American writers and people interested in Asian-American history and identity,” he said.
Van Harmelen has co-written a series of articles about Bulosan and his work on the website Discover Nikkei.
