Binalonan town declares Sept. 11 Carlos S. Bulosan Day

BINALONAN, Pangasinan — He’s not totally forgotten after all.

Finally, Binalonan’s great son, writer and poet Carlos Bulosan, got his well-deserved recognition 50 years after his death.

Vice Mayor Myrna Bell Uy, presiding officer of the municipal council, told The STAR that they recently passed Ordinance No. 2006-01 declaring Sept. 11 of every year Carlos S. Bulosan Day.

The ordinance, sponsored by councilor Francis Melvile Tinio, who chairs the council’s committees on education and culture as well as ordinances and legal matters, expresses the town’s pride of having Bulosan as one of its illustrious sons.

Bulosan hailed from Barangay Sto. Niño, where former First Lady Eva Macaraeg-Macapagal, mother of President Arroyo, also hailed from.

An eight-foot marker, stretched like a pyramid, was erected in Sto. Niño right at the spot where Bulosan was born.

"The life and works of Carlos Bulosan had brought honor and glory not only to his family but to the municipality as well," the ordinance stated.

Bulosan was born on Nov. 2, 1911 and died on Sept. 11, 1956 due to an advanced stage of broncho-pneumonia. His remains lie at Queen Anne Hill in Seattle, Washington.

When he was 17, he left his homeland for the United States where he went through difficult years of unemployment, illness and labor unrest in the farms of California and in the fish canneries of Alaska.

According to the website www.bookrags.com, Bulosan published in 1942 a volume of poetry entitled "Letter from America" and in 1943, another book of poems, "Voice of Bataan," a tribute to the soldiers who died in that historic battle.

In that same year, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt commissioned Bulosan to write one of the essays, "Freedom from Want," in "The Four Freedoms," a wartime collection that appeared in the Saturday Evening Post.

He attracted nationwide attention for his "Laughter of My Father" (1944), a collection of short stories serialized in the New Yorker.

Bulosan’s "America is in the Heart" (1946), considered by many to be his most important work, is a semi-autobiographical book describing his boyhood in the Philippines, his journey to America, and the many hardships he had encountered as a Filipino and migrant worker in that country.

During the postwar years, Bulosan, according to the website, became an outspoken critic of those who exploited workers and the poor.

In 1995, Bulosan’s "The Cry and the Dedication," which dealt with the Huk rebellion against colonization and US domination of the Philippines, was posthumously published.