Wide American Earth
SATB choir and piano
8:40 approx.
I first came across Carlos Bulosan’s works while researching Filipino-American narratives. I learned that he was one of the first Filipino immigrants in America, having moved here in the 1930s. He was a labor activist, a union organizer, a novelist, essayist, and possibly wrote one of the earliest published works about immigrating to America. He is most famous for his autobiographical work, America is in the Heart, and his essay on the Rockwell painting The Freedom from Want. In 2013, his poem I Want the Wide American Earth became the centerpiece for an exhibit at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History celebrating the rich, diverse, and important contributions of Asian-Pacific Americans. Immigrant rights and re- form persist as a common theme in Bulosan’s writing.
At the core of Wide American Earth is the immigrant’s fight for belonging and inclusion in the expansive, multitudinous space that is America. Bulosan paints a rich imagery of what this yearning was like in the middle of the 20th century. I com- missioned Aileen Cassinetto to offer a present-day perspective of the ambition and longing held deep in the hearts of immigrants. Aileen is a poet laureate of San Mateo county and, like myself, an immigrant – a Filipino-American based in California.
To want the wide American earth
—after Carlos Bulosan
In my mouth is a country of longing
The bittersweet of border crossings
Some words don’t come easy—scarce, scars
English is a language of leaving
a lexicon of who invaded
and what they left behind
I taste what passes for shrimp paste
I crave spice, some sharpness and haste
I chased a life around shifts and routes
First train leaves before first light
Last train comes before midnight
Transport me with the sight of filtered light
In my mouth is a country of bittersweet crossings
The only space I will ever occupy
is this expanse of longing
-Aileen Cassinetto