Abstract
This thesis intends to explore Carlos Bulosan’s representation of subaltern Filipino peasants and workers to discuss the issue of capitalism in The Laughter of My Father (1944) and America Is in the Heart (1946). Being a Filipino American writer with a peasant origin, Bulosan delineates the Philippine society and the life of the Filipinos from a subaltern perspective (the perspective of the Filipinos who are politically and economically underprivileged under Western colonization). This thesis takes into consideration the colonial experience of the Philippines to analyze Bulosan’s representation of subaltern Filipinos from the perspective of class and investigate the reconstruction of class formation, subaltern struggle, and subaltern solidarity in these two texts. Bulosan’s narrative of the subaltern Filipinos reveals his perception and critiques of colonial capitalism through a re-imagery of Filipino villages, and further indicates his yearning for action and unity among the subaltern as a response towards the capitalist periods. This thesis offers a way of understanding America Is in the Heart and The Laughter of My Father in relation to its social context and reads them as complementary to each other to provide a fuller vision of Bulosan’s subaltern Filipinos in the first half of the twentieth century.