Revista de Estudios Norteamericanos. n.• 4 (1996). pp.

139- 145

BIENVENIDO SANTOS'S WHAT THE

HELL POR YOU LEFT YOUR HEART IN
SAN FRANCISCO AND THE FILIPINO
IMMIGRANT DREAM
Rocío G. DAvrs
Universidad de Navarra

The voice of the immigrant as perrnanent exile has held a special fascination for
Filipino American writer Bienvenido N. Santos, whose fiction centers mainly on the
Filipino American community in America. Himself an inunigrant who went to the United
States for the first time in 1941 and has Jived there most of his life, Santos' work deals
almost exclusively on the plight of the men and women who left the Philippines to
make America their home. In short story collections such as You Lovely People, The
Day the Dancers Carne and Scent ofApples, and novels as The Man Who (Thought He)
Looked Like Rohert Taylor and What the Hellfor You Left Your Heart in San Francisco,
he explores the conditions of the diverse types of immigrants and tells their stories,
sorne of success and wealth, most of nostalgia and desperation.
Santos is an important link in the chain of Filipino immigrant writers who have
written on the plight of their countrymen. From Carlos Bulosan 's America is in the
Heart in 1946, to Jessica Hagedorn's 1989 Dogeaters, Filipinos writing in the U.S.
have constantly dealt with the themes central to all Asían American literatures: the pain
of immigration, homesickness, the cruelty of racism and the creation of a new identity.
With regard to this literary tradition, Epifanio San Juan, Jr. has recently pointed to the
problem and the need of reinventing the Filipino in the U.S., articulating his silence and
invisibility, for creative artists: new models must constantly be forged. A beginning
must be made from the realitites of immigrants in the second half of the century and
from the experience of Filipino Americans born in the seventies and eighties. And this
cannot be done without evoking the primal scene coeval with the present: the neocolonial
siluation of the Philippines and its antecedent stages, the conflicted terrain of ideological
140 Rocío G. DQ\•is

struggle which abolishes the distinction/distance between Filipinos in the Philippines

and Filipinos in the United States. The terrain is less geographical than cultural - culture
defined as the complex network of social practices signifying our dominant or subordinate
position in a given social formation ( 123). Interestingly enough, the shared experience
of immigration is an integral part of the Philippine cultural composition. As Shirley
Geok-lin Lim defends, expatriation, brought on by successive histories of colonization,
is itself a form and an inseparable part of Filipino identity (68). The new Filipino
American literature, therefore, must present this discourse of the Philippine cultural
uniqueness, as well as present the drama of more than one generation of immigrants.
Bienvenido N. Santos' 1987 novel, What the Hellfor You Left Your Heart in San
Francisco, is a portrait of the Filipino immigrant community ofthat city, as seen through
the eyes of a recent immigrant. San Francisco becomes the scene of the drama of the
immigrant lives, whose actors play out their roles in the middle of a city charged with
hope and laden with ambiguity. The novel 's narrator, David Tolosa, stranded in the U.S.
because of the political upheaval in the Philippines in the seventies, is hired by nouveau
riche Filipino professionals in San Francisco as the potential editor of a magazine for
expatriate Filipinos. David devotes months preparing the magazine, but the patrons
have a very narrow view of culture and their sentimental longing for their country is
easily overridden by their business sense. The capital outlay and editorial seriousness
of a first-class magazine only dismay them. The project proposal is ultimately rejected
and David leaves San Francisco.
The novel can be read as a collection of draft feature articles which constitute the
magazine developing in David's mind. As he wanders around the city, he records images
of the Filipinos who live in it, and write about them. In the background, the popular
song «l Left My Heart in San Francisco», dripping with romance and nostalgia, plays.
But the San Francisco David discovers is a city of ambivalence, ripe for irony. «A
blazing city, to use the doctor's term. Later, when I learned more of the city, I saw the
people who inhabited it, Filipinos among them, the very old and the very young, the
lost and the never found, their exposed lives beyond the blazing view» (32).
The most vivid image of the ambiguity of the city is provided by Estela, the
crippled daughter of the Sottos, both doctors: «Ün evenings before she would allow
herself to be tucked in bed, she had to be given time to look down at San Francisco
below the Heights, blazing up at her. The sight seemed to soothe her of all the ills that
infested her misshapen body and mind, enough to give her the peace she needed to
sleep at night» (1). Estela is entranced by her overview of the city until a telescope
reduces its remoteness and makes her confront reality. Muchas she is comforted by the
blinking lights of the city at night as seen through her naked eye, San Francisco up
close e licits a violent reaction from her. She refuses to look and will only gaze at it from
a distance: «the telescope made it look as if the city had suddenly closed in, more vivid
in details and outline, almost frightening in its neamess as if the lights could bum you
to death or entangle you among endless wires and vapor traps. The traffic moved in a
Bienvenido Santos's What the Hellfor You Lef1 Your Heart in San Francisco 141

steady flow but in close-up, something was lost along with the distance: the enchantment,
the air of mystery of a city ali ve but unreal, almost like a dream» ( 177). The drama of
the novel ultimately lies in David's realization that there is an abyss between the
magnificence of the city as seen from far away and what is viewed up close, as he
uncovers the lives hidden in the streets of San Francisco.
For overa century, California, specifically San Francisco, has been the center of
many an immigrant dream. The Chinese called it Gam Saan or Gold Mountain, and
flocked there by the thousands, certain that a few years of hard work there would permit
them to return to China wealthy men. About one million Asian Americans entered the
U.S. between the California gold rush of 1849 and the Immigration Act of 1924, when
stricted immigration laws were passed (Takaki 7). Nonetheless, the influx has not ha.lted
completely, and immigration continues. Today, Asian Americans represent nearly 9
percent of the California's population; about a fourth of San Francisco's population is
Asian, and Asians represent over half of the city's public-school students (Takaki 5).
The case of Filipino immigration is an interesting study. At the beginning of the
century, when they began to immigrate in large numbers, the Filipinos were technically
not considered foreigners, for they carne from a territory acquired from Spain at the
conclusion of the Spanish-American War. While they had not been granted citizenship,
they were classified as «American nationals,» which allowed them unrestricted entry to
the U .S. (Takaki 115). Severa! thousand young men went as pensionados - govemment-
sponsored students, Bienvenido Santos among them (Takaki 58). But the vast majority
of the migrants were laborers who worked mostly in three areas of employment: domeslic
service, the fisheries of the Northwest and Alaska, and agriculture (Takaki 3 19).
The biggest surprise the Filipinos encountered was that the door to America was
not open to them. Educated by the Americans to believe in liberty, justice and the
American way, they quickly discovered that they were «little brown brothers» only in
the Philippines; in continental America, their physical proximity exposed the limit of
American-white patemalism and benevolence. As Ronald Takaki has pointed out, «based
on an ideology of racial supremacy, American expansionism abroad turned into
exclusionism at home» (324). The Englis h-speaking Filipinos encountered racial
discrimination, often finding themsel ves identified with the Asían groups that had entered
the country earlier. They were refused entry into restaurants, excluded from theaters or
forced to sit in segregated sections; they could not buy land, nor were they eligible for
ci tizenship (Takaki 325). The transformation of innocent, hopeful young Filipino
immigrants eager for a life of freedom and happiness into a community of lonely exiles
was gradual and irreversible. The illusion of America was replaced by a fleeting dream
of the homeland, pastoral, lyrical and beyond reach.
Anti-Filipino hate and violence were most intense in California, where most of
the immigrants eventually concentrated (Takaki 326). The social system that developed
among the Filipinos differed from those of other immigrant groups. Unlike the Chinese
and the Japanese, for example, Filipinos did not develop their own ethnic sections in
142 Rocío G. Davis

cities. The Filipino districts in California were thus mainly gathering centers for migratory
workers, stop-over places before moving on again. They were not places to live and
build long-term communities as most of the immigrants were single-male migratory
workers shuttling back and forth from Seattle to San Francisco, travelling constantly
with the crops. Filipinos saw themselves as sojoumers to a greater extent than did their
counterparts from China and Japan, for they were from an American territory and thought
they could come and go as they pleased. As sojourning «nationals,» they had even less
inclination than the Chinese and Japanese to bring families and institutions, establish
enterprises, and form communities replicating their homelands (Takaki 337). As a
consequence, few married and raised families; most remained single, eaming a meager
salary, living with nostalgia and dying in poverty. Elaine H. Kim has described the
central contradiction ofFilipino immigrant life during the early period as «alienation of
feelings of displacement among those who have Ieft a traditional society where
community, kinship, and mutual support are the basis of individual mental health» (Kim
268).
As the first wave of immigrants, called the old-timers or manonf?S (a Filipino
term for «older brother» used as a respectful address to any older man), began to come
to terms with their neverretuming to the old village, a second wave ofFilipino immigrants
began to arrive. Since the fifties and the sixties almost a million ofthese new Filipinos
ha ve entered the U.S. Unlike the early Filipino immigrants, these Filipinos have come
from the city rather than the country, and they have migrated as settlers, rather than as
sojoumers. Many have been women, and the new immigrants have included professionals
such as engineers, accountants, teachers, doctors, nurses and lawyers (Takaki 432). The
factors that made them move in such masses was the opressive Marcos regime, a
problematic economy, and the overabundance of a well-educated middle-class that could
not find work after graduation. They found, in America, a place to settle down and raise
their families in relative wealth and comfort.
What the Heltfor You Left Your Heart in San Francisco presents these groups of
immigrants and their manner of surviving in the city. David, who decribes himself as
«an oriental with broad hints of Malay-Indonesian, perhaps Chinese, strain, a kind of
racial chopsuey, that's me. Better yet, for historical and ethnic accuracy, an oriental
omelette flavored with Spanish wine» (1), is ajoumalist, who seeks truth in objectivity.
His interest in the magazine heightens his awareness of the realities of immigrant life in
the U.S. in the 1970s. A hidden racism still beats: «we, who are obviously Asians, have
to be ready at ali times to prove who we are and what our intentions are, at least for the
<lay» (2). His obsession with documenting the pulse of the Filipino in San Francisco
makes him strive to look for «words to name what I see and hear and feel as 1 go about
these now familiar streets. Surely there is a way of surviving forme and others like me
in this city - without compromises and betrayals, without anchors» ( 1).
In his novel, Bienvenido Santos explores the drama of the oldtimers in a San
Francisco that is both home and not home, faced with the tragic awareness of their
Bienvenido Santos's What the Hel/for You Left Your Heart in San Francisco 143

irrevocable separation from their homeland, for whom a patient waiting for their own
deaths is «the name of the game» ( 166); of the professional immigrants who, moved by
the American Dream, carne to work and set down roots; and of the second generation,
for whom America was birthplace but not native land, hovering between two cultures,
and whose difficulty with their parents' language and ways are only cause for frustration
and pain. The imrnigrants form a culture of contrasts: first, he presents the oldtimers
who «did not want to become American citizens because they planned to retum home
to the Philippines, living the remainder of their days in the old villages, where their
roots are» (Santos 1977, 55), then, the educated and ambitious Filipinos who were
desperate to come to America and become completely assimilated into American Iife
and, finally, the children of the latter, typical embodiments of the Asían American cul-
tural dilemma.
Each Filipino has a story to tell. There is the old-timer Tingting, a former tennis
champion in the Philippines, still spry at 72, living alone in a shabby hotel room and the
other manongs who broke the monotony of their humdrum experience by going crabbing,
whose eyes «said everything about hope and disappointment» ( 130). The next generation
of doctors and businessmen offer another view of city. Most seem to have fulfilled the
American dream and their integration into American life seems so complete that, to
entertain, they prefer «a Hawaiian party to something more native to the Philippines»
(7). But the pain of immigration is not spared them. The Jaimes, for example, cannot
understand why their two youngest daughters, bom and raised in America, reject their
Filipino heritage. In their confusion, they eventually drive their daughters away, only to
roam the streets of the city in desperate search for them. The Sottos must deal with the
guilt of having left behind their severely malformed daughter when they inunigrated.
Unable to have more children, their marriage suffers and hope begins to dawn only
when they finally bring Estela to the States. The most poignant story is that of Dr.
Tablizo, who, after his mother's death, brings his father to live with his family inAmerica.
The old man had known no home but his village and, in spite of a tender relationship
with his American granddaughter, he eventually dies of what David diagnoses as a
broken heart. When Dr. Sotto insists that nobody dies of a broken heart, David can only
answer: «Filipinos do» (166). Apart from the Jaime's two rebellious daughters, David
experiences the second generation firsthand at the City College, where he is hired to
teach a course on Philippine culture. Most of his students are children of Filipino
immigrants, who «just didn ' t have any feeling for the Philippines» and continued to
«complain and ridicule their parents, specially their grandparents» (134).
Though David's interest in the immigrants is purely professional at first, the
experience elicits from him a profound emotional reaction. The magnificent view from
the hills belie the sordid world he discovers:

l told myself, get lost in the city, sniff around those places where Filipinos
live and die, introduce yourself to the new breed, get invited to their prívate
144 Rodo G. Davis

Clubs ... I got lost in the city ali right. I leamed something of what the Filipinos
were before, a hint here and there of bitterness and frustration, sometimes a
desperate struggling to attain the dream, the ultimate dream of wealth, luxury
and ease... [T]his beautiful room you !et me to live in, on top of Diamond Heights,
wasn 't any good for anything except for writing my heart out, for crying quietly,
for God's sake, while 1 gazed down the hills and valleys of your blazing city and
saw old men waiting to die a long, long way from home; and angry young brown
boys and girls who cursed their parents and spit on their own images, confused
and secretly frightened (34).

The power of David's reaction may also come from an ulterior motive for
immersion in the San Francisco: the search for his own father. Thoughts of his own
immigrant father, who one day stopped writing, are constantly on his mind. «My father
must have walked these streets. Does he still walk: them now?» (4). His obsessive search
for the truth about the immigrants becomes a personal quest for his father and, by extension,
a search for roots, both individual and national. When he comes to know the oldtimers,
David cannot help wishing Tingting were his father; and, as a model of quiet certitude
from the past, he <loes serve as a father figure. In one of the most remarkable scenes of the
book, David dreams that he does find his father, only to be told by him that he is David's
son. Leonard Casper claims that this scene can be taken to mean that David should stop
looking for himself in only in the past. The past is everpresent and is discernable therefore
in the here and now. In the case of the Filipinos, the multiplicity of pasts/fathers has to be
accepted, along with responsibility for one's own decision and behavior (Ca~per 68).
Nonetheless, life is in the present, and, although one - in particular the immigrant -
must look to the past to find a touchstone for identity, one cannot live there always and
must forge on ahead. The most positive note in the novel with regards to this is the
show David's students put on. Second generation Filipino Americans who appeared to
reject their heritage demonstrate that they are more culturally appreciative of their
homeland and its culture that their parents would have thought. But the point is made
clear: the Philippines is the past and San Francisco is both the present and the future.
Bienvenido Santos' San Francisco is the world compressed and endlessly tuming.
«Sometimes while walking through the streets of San Francisco, I felt no sense of
direction. lt mattered little whether 1 was going north or south, east or west. 1 was going
nowhere and yet I wanted to be somewhere but I didn 't know where. Ali 1 wanted was
the movement, the seeming progression into what lay ahead, which somehow calmed
me clown and there was less clutter in my mind» (27). The city offered many things to
many people. David moves from seeingevery street as «a rainbow's end» (28) to finding
«the jungle of the streets ... » (67). His dream-father calls it «One hell of a city» (189).
But it will not Ieave its inhabitants or those who pass through unscarred. David's
leavetaking articulates the dangers the city offers: «Goodbye, San Francisco. Oh, Jet
me leave with my heart intact and in the right place» (167). His experience of the
Bienvenido Santos's What the He/lfor You Left Your Heart in San Francisco 145

immigrants in the city has forced him to look both at himself and at his country and
heritage in a different light. His valedictory, laden with pathos, is a summary of the
emotional pain of the immigrant in the city:

Look close, Estela, under the stars; see us little brown men and women,
walking the streets of the city as they wind and turn and climb upward, without
warning about sudden comers and dark alleys on the downward bend. There are
no stars blinking at our feet, no encrusted jewels, such as you might imagine,
winking over our heads. We are flesh and blood, tired before the day is over,
seeking to find after the rains, a welcome door, a smiling face, both the familiar
and the strange. Surrounded by strangers, we look for friends in a continuing
search against despair. We have left native land but our hearts are still there, not
here, Estela, not in this golden city by the bay... You see us all, don 't you? At
least, your heart knows we are here, that's why you love to look down from
Diamond Heights on this city blazing up at you.... Then there are the nameless
ones ... They have found this city, their city now, nurturing them like a mother
sitting on the hills, the fog in her bosom, the salty breezes chasing the clouds
beyond the reach of your naked eyes, Estela... There is fear in our hearts as we
listen for tremors under our feet and against our will we look back to that home
far away now lost in the late mists of evening and the long years. Pray that life
gives us another chance for each loss we suffer as we walk and live in these
sullen streets among rusting wharves, smelly canneries and loud fish markets far
from the vineyards spilling with bubbly wine (191-192).

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