America is in the Heart.

In English class we're reading America is in the Heart by Carlos Bulosan. America is in the Heart is a semi-autobiographical novel that depicts his life in the Philippines as a peasant through his life in America as a labor worker. Bulosan is a Filipino American immigrant, poet, writer, short story teller and activist.

He writes his novel though his own experiences in the Philippines and America and also writes through the experiences of all Filipinos and Filipino American immigrants. He does this so the his novel can share the stories of all Filipinos and Filipino American immigrants and included Philippine history as the base and support for those stories.

While reading the novel, I learned something new about the Filipino culture. Something that isn't common to where my family comes from in the Philippines. That was the virginal ritual that newlywed husbands and wives go through. It is a simple primitive ritual to find out whether or not the bride was virginal. If she was, black smoke would come out of the house and if she wasn't, no smoke would come out. If no smoke came out, that meant that the groom had been deceived and would return the bride to her people. It also meant that the woman could no longer marry. I thought that was interesting because it was something new.

Something I found interesting in the first part of the novel was, how Bulosan wrote about his life in different parts. By that I mean, as he was writing out his life experiences he said that it was either the "end" or "beginning" of a part of his life with his father, brothers, mother etc. To me, I felt that it was of some significance to notice those because those were the markers for the new chapters in his life.