Chapter 13 - America Is in the Heart as Postcolonial Pastoral

Summary

This chapter approaches Carlos Bulosan’s oeuvre, and specifically America Is in the Heart, through the framework of postcolonial ecocriticism. It provides an overview of Bulosan’s life, works, and critical reception. Additionally, the chapter presents the history of US empire as a crucial context shaping Bulosan’s writing. It argues that Bulosan’s environmental imaginary is central to his political critique and identifies the postcolonial pastoral, described by Rob Nixon as a form of “environmental double-consciousness,” as central to Bulosan’s depiction of the Philippines in America Is in the Heart. This environmental double-consciousness emerges in America Is in the Heart not only in depictions of the ongoing consequences of dispossession and colonialism in the Philippines, but also in representations of US landscapes as themselves haunted by the USA’s colonial investment in the Philippines.