"The night came at last and darkness filled the house; except for the tiny needles of light that filtered through the walls from the sky, there was no other illumination. I found the small oil lamp where my father kept it in the bamboo rack under the homemade pillows. I lighted it and went to the kitchen...We sat on the floor and ate in the twilight with our bare hands. We spread the salted fish on the steaming rice and soaked it with broth from the vegetable pot. When we finished eating my father started washing the polished coconut shells which had been our plates and drinking cups for many generations."
page 11, America is in the Heart
It still amazes me everytime I read the book of Carlos Bulosan. He described what happens in detail and in order. I'm just thankful that I haven't experience that much of the life without electricity though I'd grown up in a "barrio" which was no flourescent light at all and I'm lucky enough not to use coconut shells as plates and cups.
We are now living in century which everything is available within our reach to comfort us, to make things leaner and easier. Bulosan recorded what was life in his generation.
