Asian American Studies: Labor - Research Paper Example

 The migration of Asian to America was mostly a result of colonialism in their continent and the response to the shortage of labor in the United States, especially the West. Increased capitalism brought with it an increased number of immigrants who were really discriminated because of their tough stance and refusal to be integrated or assimilated into the culture of the Americans. It is as a result of this discrimination, the lack of equal protection by the laws of the United States that Asian laborers faced tougher working conditions, harassment and racial violence (Bulosan, 67).

Bulosan’s America is in the Heart is the tale of immigrant Filipino workers whose work life involved beatings, brawls, and even sometimes murder during the recession time in California (Barkan, 50). The book does not however does not proclaim despair but high hopes and aspirations under such tough working conditions. This autobiography describes how Bulosan’s peasant family suffered in the Philippines from social oppression poverty and injustice and chose to seek the American dream which turned out not to be the Utopia that they had imagined.

It is this weave of experiences that the book revolves around. The life of the author as an itinerant Filipino laborer reveals the hardships that followed the harvest trail of rural West America. The horrors that accompanied the immigrants are heartbreaking. In his stoic narration, it is these tough conditions that come out as the unifying factor of this particular Asian community. The picture that the novel paints are for people whose life is a continuous struggle. Who are not able to find happiness in their own country but the fact that they are considered foreigners is well illustrated in their employment.

They get the least pay as compared to their white counterparts although they live in the American mainland. In all this desperation, the author ultimately finds his footing and rises from these shackles. Most Americans are not aware of that for the Japanese Americans; the American dream was a nightmare. Most people can recall the unjust and cruel internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War, few, however, know of the serious and harrowing labor conditions under which the mostly Japanese and other Asian immigrants went through in Hawaiian plantations during the first half of the last century.

Murayama’s All am Asking for is My Body is a sad tale that reminds us of those times that we try to sweep away. While it mostly deals with second-generation Japanese American experiences and the conflicts that they face, it aspires to explain how these communities came to be as they are. It is however clear from the book that not all Asians have a distinctive monolithic American experience. This is a story set in a different universe. Of a people who were almost considered wretched. The story revolves around the Oyamas, a Japanese American family slaving in the Hawaiian plantations of sugar during the third and fourth decades of the twentieth century.

Their living conditions are almost similar to those of the concentration camps, a world that cannot be imagined to be in America. It is clear that the internment never really directly impinged on the Oyamas but they are surely in a prison as their compatriots, a prison of poverty. Murayama writes that the family was highly indebted, they owed over $ 6,000, although their average pay from the plantation was $ 25 per month of the adults. They did not have any sick pay, never got holidays and they could only get holiday breaks during the County Fair in October, during Christmas and at New Years (Murayama, 29).

Kiyoshi and his older and rebellious brother Tosho are not only victims of an oppressive white America that the Hawaiian plantations represent but also the rigid Japanese family structure that is submissive to authority. This is what Kiyoshi notes to be the foundation of the development of the Japanese community, the national soul and more perseverance, patience, sense of duty, frugality and industry than any other race (Murayama, 65).