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Is Not Carried Through the Volume and Is Not One of the Book's Strong BOOK REVIEWS 277 is not carried through the volume and is not one of the book's strong points; it does, however, allow her to bring in whatever data she finds and considers relevant to the topics she discusses. In a chapter on sex-role socialization, Tomeh reviews the literature on a range of topics, including father-absence, the working mother, birth order, siblings, and socialization patterns of the educational and occupational worlds. Another chapter reviews the history of women in the labour force and the development of the women's movement. Tomeh points out the continued discrimination against women in our institutions and the challenge of women's liberation. In these chapters, the author very nicely combines the research literature with more essay-like statements on broader topics. There follows a section on sex-roles in a cross-cultural perspective with discussions of Canada, Western Europe, Japan and the Middle East. The particular discussions, especially the one on Canada, mix time periods and shift too easily from specific researches to broad generalizations. Yet, it is clear, within the context of each of the regions, that there are common trends towards the emancipation of women and equality with men. Tomeh concludes with an overall analysis of recent changes and a broad program for increasing sex-role equality. She suggests moves on all fronts - family relationships, schools, work world opportunities, political activity, and such adaptations as day care centers, maternal benefits and a greater participa­ tion of men in the household. In sum, the book is not a sophisticated analysis of the family and sex roles - the focus is on women, the concepts are sometimes hazy, and the generaliza­ tions too facile. Yet it does review an important area of social concern, is clearly written, cites significant sources, is temperate and reasonable in tone, and in tune with the times. York University FREDERICK ELKIN Toronto, Canada Carlos Bulosan, America is in the Heart. Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1973, 327 pp. n.p. I first heard of Carlos Bulosan as a university student. It was then that his letters were published und er the auspices of the university press. Somehow he was just a name. His work remained elusive until a few years stay in the United States, when his autobiography became available. This paperback, therefore, is a belated recognition of hirn as a writer. It is also a recognition of the universal brotherhood of pain. It is convenient that he was born a Filipino. But, he wanted desperately to belong to America, so his loving tide. The work may be read through different levels of meaning. One way of looking at it is, it presents the Filipino expatriate experience of the 30's to the 50's. It is an underview, and offers apart of the minority problem in the United States. His work presents achallenge to other minorities, considering that he only finished three grades of formal schooling. The names mentioned in the work are mosdy "old timers" (or OT's), who were not well-educated, and too busy with survival to appreciate the finer things in American lire. Journal ofAsian and African Studies XIII, 3-4 278 JOURNAL OF ASIAN AND AFRICAN STUDIES Bulosan lived mostly in the west coast, where thousands of his countrymen still reside. To the Philippine reader, it has a message of faith and sacrifice. Of the hardship of the OT's who worked in the Alaskan canneries, the vegetable pickers in California, and other forms of manual labor. The nature of their work has made them nomads, dependent on unscrupulous contractors, the ire of the conservative White farmers, the exploitation of brothel and taxi-dance­ hall owners. It presents life in the raw, and might be difficult reading for the squeamish. To the American reader, it bares a minority point of view and hopefully makes the reader a little more sympathetic to his "brothers in darkness." At least, Carey McWilliams introduction posits that view. Of what it is to be in but not tif the society. The collective and universal suffering of the less fortunate should be the concern of all, for the in words ot Bulosan ... " we are ... ... AMERICA." "It is hard to be a Filipino in California," Bulosan wrote. Substitute the word America, and it would still have summed-up an underview of the Filipino experience. The experience is not really unusual as one reads Oscar Handlin's The Uprooted and its thesis of the "history of immigration as a history of alien­ ation" (p. 4). The book is unevenly divided into two major parts. The first, is a recreation ofPhilippine life as he lived it, and the rest is his American experiences. Bulosan closely identified with the tenants of Pangasinan. The greater part of the work is devoted to his work experiences as a field hand in California, Washington and Oregon, a cannery worker in Alaska, a labor organizer, his bout with tuberculosis, and his productive writing period (roughly the years 1936 to 1946). Car10s (or Charlie) to his friends was a man of acute artistic sensibility. He was described as a gentle, 10ving, something of a poet-saint. His sensitivity encouraged hirn to rise above and remain a100f from the decay and destruction around hirn. The two great motives of his career were his hunger for know1- edge and human affection. Examp1es of his sensitivity are so numerous, but an illustration from the work will suffice: Days of hunger and loneliness came. Aching hunger and stifling loneliness. Every dawn was the opening of a cavern of starvation and exile: from the touch of friendly hands, of friendly voices. And every hour was a blow against the senses dulling all impulses toward decency (p. 137). Was there a place in this vast continent where Filipinos were allowed to live in peace? (p. 258). These were the exiles, who when they get together and "started singing Philip­ pine songs their voices were so sad, so full of yesterday and the haunting presence of familiar seas, as they reached the end of creation, that life seem ended and no bright spark was 1eft in the world" (p. 108). These were the same men whom Bienvenido Santos called "hurt men." He experienced the callousness of the Filipino labor contractor. The regionalism and tribalism that still plague Filipino organizations in America. Their ra ci al sensitivity. Toward the end he had cleansed himself ofbitterness and found the dialec­ tic of higher revelation. This was his faith: Journal ofAsian and African Studies XIII, 3-4 .
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