Such is the kind of radical growth that has put critics and scholars at a point of contention as to how to read the novel’s conclusion. As America is in the Heart closes, Allos takes a bus and describes the view before him:
I glanced out of the window again to look at the broad land I had dreamed so much about, only to discover with astonishment that the American earth was like a huge heart unfolding warmly to receive me. I felt it spreading through my being, warming me with its glowing reality. It came to me that no man—no one at all—could destroy my faith in America again. (325)
What the reader finds in the end is a sort of reconciliation of what (seems to be) discrepant views on America, folded neatly into a singular proclamation of the protagonist’s love for the country. San Juan views these baffling contradictions as an ‘ideological pastiche’ (‘Between a Time’ 115) that results from, among many reasons, reading America is in the Heart in isolation from the rest of Bulosan’s works, which show the scope and significance of his activism and deals more extensively with his competing view of America. More interestingly Santa Ana invokes Berlant and cautions the reader against reading this ending as an instance of cruel optimism. Whether or not Bulosan or Allos does feel a cruel attachment to America is beyond the purview of this essay, but it is nevertheless indicative of the pressures exerted on the subject by such a fantasy, a dominant imaginary of? Philippine-American relations from which texts (and lives) are positioned and read. After all, the Philippines’ colonial history with America extends beyond the latter’s presence in the country and is sustained by fantasies—of other spaces, times, and lives—that ‘are the hegemonic forms of expression of our desiring-actions,’ such as, in this case, desires of moving elsewhere (Tadiar 6). Here, Berlant and Tadiar merely name two sides of the same coin: dreaming and desiring as forms of attachments, cruel because, in the texts in question, the object of desire is the ‘good life’ in America, which, time and again, we are reminded was never structurally made to be fulfilled. While certainly contextual and historical forces reconfigure this notion of a good life, the affective drive and orientation of such dreaming and desiring nevertheless endure throughout time as part of ‘a larger repertoire of American fantasies that compose the Philippines’ postcolonial imaginary of the United States’ (Capino xix).
This is a historical-affective imaginary that Lim-Wilson’s is cognizant of and which, in my opinion, her poetry laments as she also gradually finds other ways of feeling for and about the Philippines and America. She treats this cruel attachment with sarcasm and self-awareness in ‘Inventing the Filipino,’ with a persona that, speaking directly to the empire, foregrounds the absurdity of mimicry that is symptomatic of the attachment to a fantasy scaffolded by colonial legacy:
Let’s celebrate the yo-yo makers. Before you named it “Walking the Dog” And “Cat’s cradle,” our folks Climbed trees, those agile monkeys, Knocking down the day’s meal With the world’s first yo-yo Created from twine, a skull- Sized stone and the spittle Of gods. What about that jeep That bounced on the moon? We Thought of that, too. From The war’s heap you left behind. […] … We have more Elvises than we can count. And, of Course, our very own Marie Antoinette, Who has only you to thank For the swan-shape of her ankles. […] … We’d like to join you. Someday, very much. And so We sway to our sad-sweet songs , Longing to be the 51st appendix. (CS 10-11)
The last four lines summarize and recognize the affective imaginary of optimism and longing that endures, the same complicated relationship between migrants and America that Bulosan articulated in his novel. Lim-Wilson deftly handles this complicated longing despite, or because, of the depth of her awareness of the migrant’s history in America’s consciousness.
In ‘Positively No Filipinos Allowed,’ the persona converses with the time Bulosan wrote about, when restaurants in America would hang signs bearing the poem’s title at their doors (Takaki in Sabanpan-Yu 16). The poem distills her outrage:
… My face, Which in broad daylight is a frightening mask, Vanishes. Undisturbed, I dream Of harvesting another barnful Of fruit, choosing the most Overripe to throw, like Grenades, at all closed doors. (CS 13)
In other poems, the reader encounters the same persona, one whose awareness of history and politics of perception fuels an unwavering disavowal of America. For instance, ‘My Life in the News’ reproaches the media for relying on dehumanized and exploitative images of the Filipino migrant, from the domestic worker to the female sex worker, in shaping public perception, buttressing a colonial history:
Years under the yoke have made our necks Pliant. We nod like windblessed flowers. Flowers scattered the world over, from Singapore to Paris, watching Over powdered babies, or being watched Through beer and cigarette breezes As we open and close, open and close, Generous as gods with our secrets. (CS 41)
And as in ‘Inventing’ she speaks back:
Never stop watching us. When We can shrink no more, we vanish. Finding no tracks, you grow alarmed For who now will tell you what to do In the face of your shadow’s disappearance? (CS 42)
