farmer who owned some land to a tenant farmer owning no land and constantly worried about how to feed the family. Bulosan's brother had fought in World War I in Europe and seen the world. After the war he returned to the village, married, and immediately started a family--only to regret falling into the peasant-village trap forever. He urged Bulosan to escape. All of these things together provide an important economic motive for Asian peasants to leave the villages and go to America. Bulosan worked his way over on a ship taking migrant workers to Seattle.
But the golden promise of America was not necessarily its reality. This refers to another factor of
...