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Carlos Bulosan’s book, America is in the Heart, his life is marked by several different events, one of them being the meeting and reappearance of Marian. Carlos first encountered her at the old train station at Sunnyside. Carlos had just arrived in America, and was still foreign to America. By the time Marian reappeared in Carlos’ life, whether by mistake or not, Carlos had grown tremendously, from cutting fish in Alaska to participating in labor unions and preparing to change the world.
“The girl spread some newspapers on the floor and lay down to sleep. I struck a match and watched her face affectionately. She looked a little like my older sister, Francisca. There was a sudden rush of warm feeling in me, yearning to comfort her with the words I knew. This ravished girl and this lonely night, in a freight train bound for an unknown city. . . . I could not hold back the tears that came to my eyes.” (114)

The second time that Carlos Bulosan met Marian, she was a kind, loving Caucasian woman who cared for him. Him and his two friends, Jose and Millar, had been ambushed and beaten by white men who opposed their labor union ideals. As Carlos’ grogginess wore off, he came to realize who Marian was. “This Marian: she was small, quiet, and lovely with long brown hair. Her hair- where had I seen it before? The girl on the freight train!” (213)
The Marian that Carlos first met on the rickety train had evolved into a woman who knew what was corrupted and what could be loved in their growing country. This ravished girl that had been abused on that train had grown into an accepting woman who gratefully allowed Carlos to live under her roof. “There was kindness in her face. . . . There was tenderness in her touch.” (210) She was different from the other white women and men who loved to use Filipinos for their sadistic urges. Despite the racial injustice against all the Filipinos, she neglected those thoughts to care for Carlos.
After Carlos is taken in by Marian, his lifestyles rapidly twist to new customs. Marian showers him with gifts that she had longed to give someone. He is no longer discriminated as a Filipino. Instead, with Marian at his side, he becomes transformed into a man with a social status of a civilized white man. “It was unbelievable that I could sit with a white girl in a famous place!” (216) The first time he encountered the racial difference between a Filipino and a Caucasian woman when he was dating Judith. “But one day, a Filipino and a white woman came to the restaurant to eat and were refused, I flung my apron away and attacked the headwaiter with my fists.” (173) The shock that came to Carlos when this happens is enormous, but he recovers quickly enough so his emotions aren’t revealed to Marian.
The prejudice that Carlos first encountered in America had completely disappeared without a trace. His view of America changed, from being full of ignorant fools who were sadistically racist to a society of caring people that didn’t cruelly beat Filipinos, but instead lovingly took them in and nourished them. Marian was one of Carlos’ fulcrums for his changes. One of the very first turning points in Carlos’ life was shortly after he immigrated to America. “He [Alonzo] was another who conditioned my thinking, who affected my social attitudes.” (136) Alonzo was one of the first Filipinos that Carlos met, who campaigned for justice for his fellow Filipinos.
Carlos’ reaction towards Macario and Amando when he first met them in America was his shock of how they had changed.
“I noticed he had started using my Christian name.” (124)
“Now he had changed, and I could not understand him any more. ‘Please God, don’t change me in America!’ I said to myself, looking the other way so I would not cry.” (126)
“He [Macario] had changed in many different ways.” (130)

Carlos had noticed his brothers’ transformations from their stay in America, but failed to notice his own. He is also changed by many other Filipino’s view of corrupted America.
“And perhaps it was this narrowing of our life into an island, into a filthy segment of American society, that had driven Filipinos like Doro inward, hating everyone and despising all positive urgencies toward freedom.” (121)
“‘This is a war between labor and capital. To our people, however, it is something else. It is an assertion of our right to be human beings again, Carl. But in order for you to understand what this struggle means to me, I’ll begin from the beginning of my life in the United States…’ ” (186)

These words and statements from several others of Carlos’ closest allies forged a new relationship with America. Carlos began to think of America differently than he originally perceived when he was in the Philippines. Carlos’ vision of America in the Philippines was a land of opportunities, but he learned from his peers that he had to make his own opportunities and
No longer was America a golden haven that promised wealth and prosperity, but is lavished with pimps, prostitutes, and racists, but it was a country that had strayed from it’s path, and would be changed. Carlos entered Pascual’s newspaper company in hope for reshaping his world.
“The agricultural workers were beginning to ask for unity, but had been barred from established unions. The Filipino workers started an independent union, and Jose was one of its organizers. I was happy to work with him, too. And happy also to know that in this feudalistic town the social awakening of Filipinos in California was taking shape.” (183)

Getting hired at this diminutive newspaper business was a start for Carlos in his foundation for molding America in his heart. The New Tide, the newspaper that him and his associates had worked so vigorously on, had disintegrated when Pascual, the leader of this freelance newspaper organization, died. Carlos and Jose began to rebuild the Filipino’s Workers’ Association by themselves. The FWA began losing it’s popularity, and the two men tried their hardest to restore the union back to its former glory. As they elevate through the ranks of the union, the higher they get, the greater number of whites who seek their deaths. Carlos and Jose are beaten in a final attempt to disperse the union when Marian reenters Carlos’ life.
The death of Marian rewrote Carlos’ life completely. He was overshadowed by her death, only overcoming it with the help of the Odell sisters. As he lay in his hospital bed, he began to learn about the rocky history of America and starts to shape the future history of it through his poetry and articles that he writes.