Book Talk: America Is In The Heart

This book brought me a lot of emotions, especially because the author came from the same place my parents did. I feel like I personally know the author because I can totally relate to what he’s been through in a way. I’ve visited the Philippines before, and I know exactly how the American’s treat the Filipinos, and vice versa. American’s look at the peasants with sympathy, and they look at American’s with envy. There was a part in the book where a middle-class ignorant lady purposefully knocked down a huge bowl of beans just because Carlos’s mother was staring at her with envy. Then his mother got on her hands and knees and started picking up all the beans and was saying “It’s okay, it’s okay...” It made me very sad because that shows how much even people of your own race really care about one another. This book also made me realize how corrupt third world countries may be. The governments take so much money from the peasants, and can’t even provide education for even half the population. They take money from the poor, only to make the wealthy even wealthier. In Carlos’s family, it was only his older brother who succeeded past through high school that’s what the family could only afford.

Growing up, Carlos’s family was getting smaller and smaller because either his siblings were dying, or moving away. When it was time for Carlos to realize that he needs to go, he leaves his two younger sisters with his parents, his father already getting very sick. Although they are very poor, and his father was very sick, Carlos needed to leave his family for a better life for himself. He didn’t want to leave them, but he had to. Through the long process, he made it to America only to find a more difficult life. He hopped on trains and went from city to city in search of labor jobs. Sometimes he worked the whole day, only to make fifty cents.

This book makes me appreciate the fact that I live in America, because here everything is basically given to us. I have the resources I need to help me in everything I try to accomplish, and best of all, I have the freedom to do what I want. Because of this book, I learned that many poor people do everything they can to survive. They don’t even have any mode of transportation, so if they want to go somewhere, they’ll either have to walk or pay a few pesos to ride on the back of a bike. They make their money through hard work of cultivating their land so that they can grow food. It seems like we all take for granted what we have, compared to other countries where living may be a difficulty. Not only in the Asian countries, but many others as well.