Carlos Bulosan - IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT WE ARE

            

 If you want to know what we are who inhabit

forest mountain rivershore, who harness

beast, living steel, martial music (that classless

language of the heart), who celebrate labour,

wisdom of the mind, peace of the blood;

If you want to know what we are who become

animate at the rain's metallic ring, the stone's

accumulated strength, who tremble in the wind's

blossoming (that enervates earth's potentialities),

who stir just as flowers unfold to the sun;

If you want to know what we are who grow

powerful and deathless in countless counterparts,

each part pregnant with hope, each hope supreme,

each supremacy classless, each classlessness

nourished by unlimited splendor of comradeship;

We are multitudes the world over, millions everywhere;

in violent factories, sordid tenements, crowded cities;

in skies and seas and rivers, in lands everywhere;

our number increase as the wide world revolves

and increases arrogance, hunger disease and death.

We are the men and women reading books, searching

in the pages of  history for the lost word, the key

to the mystery of living peace, imperishable joy;

we are factory hands field hands mill hand everywhere,

molding creating building structures, forging ahead,

Reaching for the future, nourished in the heart;

we are doctors scientists chemists discovering,

eliminating disease and hunger and antagonisms;

we are soldiers navy-men citizens guarding

the imperishable will of man to live in grandeur,

We are the living dream of dead men everywhere,

the unquenchable truth that class-memories create

to stagger the infamous world with prophecies

of unlimited happiness_a deathless humanity;

we are the living and the dead men everywhere....

If you want to know what we are, observe

the bloody club smashing heads, the bayonet

penetrating hallowed breasts, giving no mercy; watch the

bullet crashing upon armorless citizens;

look at the tear-gas choking the weakened lung.

If you want to know what we are, see the lynch

trees blossoming, the hysterical mob rioting;

remember the prisoner beaten by detectives to confess

a crime he did not commit because he was honest,

and who stood alone before a rabid jury of ten men,

And who was sentenced to hang by a judge

whose bourgeois arrogance betrayed the office

he claimed his own; name the marked man,

the violator of secrets; observe the banker,

the gangster, the mobsters who kill and go free;

We are the sufferers who suffer for natural love

of man for man, who commemorate the humanities

of every man; we are the toilers who toil

to make the starved earth a place of abundance

who transform abundance into deathless fragrance.

We are the desires of anonymous men everywhere,

who impregnate the wide earth's lustrous wealth

with a gleaming flourescence; we are the new thoughts

and the new foundations, the new verdure of the mind;

we are the new hope new joy life everywhere.

We are the vision and the star, the quietus of pain;

we are the terminals of inquisition, the hiatuses

of a new crusade; we are the subterraean subways

of suffering; we are the will of dignities;

we are the living testament of a flowering race.

If you want to know what we are

WE ARE REVOLUTION!

About the author: 

Carlos Bulosan was born in the Philippines in the rural farming village of Mangusmana, near the town of Binalonan (Pangasinan province, Luzon island).  He was the son of a farmer and spent most of his upbringing in the countryside with his family.  Like many families in the Philippines, Carlos’s family struggled to survive during times of economic hardship. Many families were impoverished and many more would suffer because of the conditions in the Philippines created by US colonization. 

Traveling by ship, Carlos arrived in Seattle on July 22, 1930 at the age of seventeen. With only three years of education from the Philippines, Carlos spoke little English and had barely any money left.

From several years of racist attacks, starvation, and sickness, Carlos underwent surgery for tuberculosis in Los Angeles.

Yet, he recovered and stayed in the hospital for about two years where he spent much of his time reading and writing.

The discrimination and unhealthy working conditions Carlos had experienced in many of his workplaces encouraged him to participate in union organizing with other Filipinos and various workers. Carlos become a self-educated and prolific writer determined to voice the struggles he had undergone as a Filipino coming to America and the struggles he had witnessed of other people.  Like many of his fellow Filipinos in his time, Carlos never had the opportunity to return to the Philippines.  After years of hardship and flight, he passed away in Seattle suffering from an advanced stage of bronchopneumonia.  He is buried at Queen Anne Hill in Seattle.

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