사회적 텍스트 『미국은 내 마음속에』에 나타난 도시주의

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of urban characteristics on the protagonist's search for self identity in Carlos Bulosan’s America is in the Heart. This novel is a social text in that it deals not only with Filipino American laborers' lives and revolt but also with the protagonist's becoming a socialist writer. In addition, it is a historiographic social text in the way that it represents social realities and rapid changes of the Philippines in American colonial era. The city of America is in the Heart plays a role as the obstacle to the fulfillment of Allos' desires for gaining his “home” and sense of self, while ironically, it may promote and encourage them. The Filipino and American cities are the site of class struggle between white colonizer and Filipine colonized, the rich and the poor, and capital and labor. Also the cities prove Raymond Williams’ “metropolitan imperialism” (Williams 286) that the colonial ruler exploited labor and natural resources of the colony, which provoked the colonized into mass migration and to settle down in the urban ghetto of the imperial center. In the cities of class struggle and neo-colonial domination does Allos gain his self identity as a social activist and writer through mutual assistance among minorities and social consciousness owing to benevolent white people. Ultimately, the city is a promotor for Allos to survive in a new world, to have a sense of belonging, and to acquire his own identity.