Carlos Bulosan — Collected Poems

11 February 1911, Binalonan, Pangasinan, Philippines (probable; sources conflict) – 11 September 1956, Seattle, Washington

Carlos Bulosan crossed the Pacific in 1930 and spent the next twenty-six years turning migrant labor, racial violence, illness, anti-colonial politics, and friendship into a literature of collective survival. After seasonal work and organizing on the West Coast, long hospital stays in Los Angeles gave him time to read and write; by wartime he was publishing in Poetry, editing Chorus for America with Dion O’Donnol’s Wagon & Star Press, and addressing a national audience through “Freedom from Want.” His verse moves from brief imagist lyrics and haunted self-portraits to the mass voice of The Voice of Bataan, while repeatedly testing whether America can become the democracy it promises. This edition resets the fourteen recovered Poetry poems, the five-poem Chorus for America sequence, and the complete Voice of Bataan, preserving their order, stanza structure, sectioning, and publication history. The four poems known from the 1932 anthology California Poets and the collection Letter from America remain documented but are not reproduced without readable primary witnesses.

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Catalogue

Asian American and Transpacific Poetry

Associations

Bright Mosaic–Wagon & Star Network Filipino American Literary Network Migration and Exile Transpacific Writing Work and Working Lives World War II, Fascism, and Exile

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Bibliography

Bulosan, Carl. “Alien Wind,” “Destiny,” “Greenery,” and “Immortality.” California Poets: An Anthology of 244 Contemporaries, 1932, pp. 103–05.

———, editor. Chorus for America: Six Philippine Poets. Foreword by Dion O’Donnol. Wagon and Star Publishers in collaboration with Harvey Parker and Craftsmen, 1942. 39 pp.

———. The Voice of Bataan. Coward-McCann, under the auspices of the American-Philippine Foundation, 1943.

———. “Freedom from Want.” Saturday Evening Post, 6 Mar. 1943.

———. The Laughter of My Father. Harcourt, Brace, 1944.

———. America Is in the Heart: A Personal History. Harcourt, Brace, 1946.

———. “Bulosan, Carlos.” Twentieth Century Authors: First Supplement, edited by Stanley J. Kunitz, H. W. Wilson, 1955, pp. 144–45.

———. Sound of Falling Light: Letters in Exile. Edited by Dolores S. Feria. University of the Philippines Press, 1960.

———. The Philippines Is in the Heart: A Collection of Short Stories. Edited by E. San Juan Jr. New Day, 1978.

———. If You Want to Know What We Are: A Carlos Bulosan Reader. Edited by E. San Juan Jr. West End Press, 1983.

———. The Cry and the Dedication. Temple University Press, 1995. Written in the early 1950s.

———. On Becoming Filipino: Selected Writings of Carlos Bulosan. Edited by E. San Juan Jr. Temple University Press, 1995.

———. Collected Poems. Edited by Brian Kim Stefans. The Text-Tech Papers, 2026.

Bulosan, Carlos, and others. The New Tide. Proletarian literary magazine, 1934.

Bulosan, Carlos [credited as Carl Bulosan in the earlier groups]. Fourteen poems in Poetry: A Magazine of Verse, Feb. 1936–Apr. 1942.

———. Letter from America. J. A. Decker, 1942. 68 pp.

———, editor. 1952 Yearbook: Cannery Workers Local 37. Local 37, ILWU, 1952.

Works About the Author

“Academy of American Poets profile.” A concise reference biography and selection of later-facing links; its birth date reflects one side of the disputed record.

“HistoryLink biography.” A Seattle-centered account with attention to migration, wartime fame, and his final years.

Alquizola, Marilyn C. “The Fictive Narrator of America Is in the Heart.” Frontiers of Asian-American Studies, edited by Gail M. Nomura et al., Washington State University Press, 1989, pp. 211–17.

———. “Subversion or Affirmation: The Text and Subtext of America Is in the Heart.” Asian Comparative and Global Perspectives, Washington State University Press, 1991, pp. 199–209.

Alquizola, Marilyn C., and Lane Ryo Hirabayashi. “Carlos Bulosan’s Final Defiant Acts: Achievements during the McCarthy Era.” Amerasia Journal, vol. 38, no. 3, 2012, pp. 29–50.

“University of Washington digital exhibit.” An illustrated, institutionally curated biography organized around migration, labor, wartime publication, surveillance, Local 37, and Bulosan’s Seattle years.

Campomanes, Oscar V., and Todd S. Gernes. “Carlos Bulosan and the Act of Writing.” Philippine Studies, vol. 40, no. 1, 1992, pp. 68–82.

“Poetry Foundation archive.” Entry point for the original Poetry issue pages and scans from 1936–42.

Espiritu, Augusto Fauni. Five Faces of Exile: The Nation and Filipino American Intellectuals. Stanford University Press, 2005.

Evangelista, Susan. Carlos Bulosan and His Poetry: A Biography and Anthology. University of Washington Press, 1985.

Friday, Chris. Organizing Asian American Labor: The Pacific Coast Canned-Salmon Industry. Temple University Press, 1994.

Fujita-Rony, Dorothy B. American Workers, Colonial Power: Philippine Seattle and the Transpacific West. University of California Press, 2003.

Morantte, P. C. Remembering Carlos Bulosan: His Heart Affair with America. New Day, 1984.

“University of Washington exhibit bibliography.” Primary and secondary sources used for the university’s Bulosan exhibit.

“HathiTrust record for The Voice of Bataan.” Public-domain catalogue record and complete scan used as this edition’s base witness.

“Library of Congress: Bulosan and Filipino Migration.” Report on the 2006 Library of Congress symposium and the continuing recovery of Bulosan’s work.

San Juan, E. Jr. Carlos Bulosan and the Imagination of the Class Struggle. University of the Philippines Press, 1972.

———. Carlos Bulosan—Revolutionary Filipino Writer in the United States: A Critical Appraisal. Peter Lang, 2017.

United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. “Carlos Bulosan File.” Partial file, University of Washington Libraries.

University of Washington Libraries. “Author, Poet, and Worker: The World of Carlos Bulosan.” Digital exhibit and bibliography.

———. Carlos Bulosan Microfilm Collection: Guide. Includes material from Josephine Patrick, Aurelio Bulosan, the University of Chicago, and University of Washington collections.

———. Aurelio Bulosan Papers and Aurelio Bulosan, Collector: Guide. Accession 2329.