Oppression does not only occur in the physical space– it also dominates the literary realm. While the majority enjoys the fruits of narrative plentitude, minority groups– most often including Asian-American writers– experience the obstacle of narrative scarcity within dominant society. Due to this identity strung together by oppression and institutionalized colonialism in literary studies, minority writing is forced to assume a kind of antagonism, a prefab agony about being invariably misunderstood. Minority writers– specifically Asian-American writers– are forced to embrace their trauma placed upon them by institutional hardships as their only outlet of writing, as if their generational lesions are only embraced to provide literary entertainment. The value of their voice and their writing is therefore based upon how distressing and damaging their experience of growing up as Asian-American may be. As this issue of the paradox of the Asian-American identity is rooted within the model minority discourse and has now been exacerbated through the xenophobic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is this struggle of belligerent erasure in Asian-American literature that has not only aided in its misrepresentation and representation but has affected the understanding of one’s identity between their racial and ethnic backgrounds. Through a hybrid of critical analysis and a personal narrative poem, this paper researches the dichotomy of the Asian-American identity through two celebrated Filipino-American writers and their contrasting works of literature– Carlos Bulosan’s America is in the Heart and Elaine Castillo’s America is Not the Heart– by illustrating the physical and internal struggle of being Filipino and American while simultaneously being both Filipino-American as they are explored in different yet similar mechanisms.