Jessica Hagedorn
Jessica Hagedorn is a prominent Filipino-American author, poet, and playwright born in 1949 in Manila, Philippines. She moved to California in 1963, where she began to appreciate her Filipino heritage and connect with diverse communities challenging American cultural narratives. Hagedorn's literary career began with the publication of her poetry in the 1970s, with her first collection, "The Death of Anna May Wong," being published with the help of notable figures from the Beat Generation. Her work often addresses themes of colonialism, consumerism, and the complexities of Filipino identity, most notably in her acclaimed novel "Dogeaters," which critiques the socio-political landscape of the Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos.
Hagedorn's exploration of personal and cultural identity continues through her subsequent novels, including "The Gangster of Love" and "Dream Jungle," which examine the intersections of culture and experience. In addition to her literary contributions, she has been an advocate for more nuanced representations of Asian and Filipino communities in the arts. Hagedorn's editorial work, such as the anthology "Charlie Chan Is Dead," aimed to challenge stereotypes and promote a broader understanding of Asian identities. Throughout her career, she has encouraged artists to transcend personal narratives and engage with a wider human experience, fostering a more inclusive artistic landscape.
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Subject Terms
Jessica Hagedorn
- Born: 1949
- Birthplace: Manila, Philippines
Author Profile
Born and raised in the Philippines, Jessica Hagedorn experienced the United States through the eyes of her mother and through images provided by American textbooks and movies. “The colonization of our imagination was relentless,” she has said. Only when she started living in California in 1963 did she begin to appreciate what was precious in the Filipino extended family, a cultural feature, that in some ways, she had left behind. In California, she began to feel kinship with persons of various national origins who challenged American myths. Kenneth Rexroth, who had been a patron of the “Beat Generation" in San Francisco during the 1950s, introduced Hagedorn to the poets who gathered at the City Lights bookstore. In 1973, Rexroth helped her publish her first poems, later collected as a single work titled The Death of Anna May Wong. Her principal concern was the exploitation of Filipino workers.
Hagedorn's poetry became more and more influenced by the rhythms of popular street music. In 1975, she published a volume of collected prose and poetry called Dangerous Music. The same year, she formed her band, the West Coast Gangster Choir, where she wrote her own lyrics.
In 1978, Hagedorn left San Francisco and established herself in New York City, where she performed her poetry at Joseph Papp’s Public Theater along with Ntozake Shange and Thulani Davis. In 1981, she published Pet Food & Tropical Apparitions, her second collection of mixed prose and poetry.
During the 1980s Hagedorn worked on her first novel, Dogeaters (1990), which exposes corruption in her homeland as a result of Ferdinand Marcos’s years of “constitutional authoritarianism.” Hagedorn has described Dogeaters as a love letter to her motherland. The characters in her novel for the most part are trapped by consumerism, a plight caused by Filipinos’ long history as a colonized people combined with their dreams of success, which too often came from American soap operas. In 1998, La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego produced a stage version of Dogeaters, for which Hagedorn wrote the script.
Hagedorn published her second novel, The Gangster of Love, in 1996. The story, which follows a Filipina musician whose family moves to San Francisco in the 1960s, was heavily based on Hagedorn's own life and her experience in the West Coast Gangster Choir. She followed up in 2003 with Dream Jungle, which uses an unlikely connection between two seemingly disparate events—the discovery of a lost tribe in a remote area of the Philippines and the filming of a Hollywood movie about the Vietnam War—to explore issues of corruption, colonialism, and cultural identity. Her fourth novel, Toxicology, was released in 2011. Set in Manhattan's West Village, the plot follows two women writers as their artistic lives crash together and their personal lives are weighed down by tragedy.
Hagedorn’s work is devoted to substituting for such stereotypes the complexities visible among people in Metro Manila and the urban reaches of the American coasts. The title she chose for the 1993 anthology Charlie Chan Is Dead, for which she served as editor, was intended to signify a new image for Asians and repudiate the "famous fake 'Asian' pop icon."
In a 2022 interview, Hagedorn spoke against artists whose works focused only on members of their own cultural community. She cautioned against these niches that served to “limit your humanity.” She views these types of works can result in persons being considered in monolithic terms. Instead, she encourages young artists not to be limited only by their personal experiences. Hagedon also believes much of her career work, particularly her activist efforts during her early years, have finally resulted in more accurate portrayals and opportunities for both Asian and Filipino artists.
Bibliography
Ancheta, Shirley. Review of Danger and Beauty, by Jessica Hagedorn. Amerasia Journal, vol. 20, no. 1, 1994, pp. 197–202.
Campomanes, Oscar V. “Hagedorn, Jessica Tarahata.” The Oxford Companion to Women’s Writing in the United States, edited by Cathy N. Davidson and Linda Wagner-Martin, Oxford UP, 1995, pp. 370–71.
Casper, Leonard. “Four Filipina Writers: Recultivating Eden.” Amerasia Journal, vol. 24, no. 3, 1998, pp. 143–59.
Doyle, Jacqueline. “‘A Love Letter to My Motherland’: Maternal Discourses in Jessica Hagedorn’s Dogeaters.” Hitting Critical Mass, vol. 4, no. 2, 1997, pp. 1–25.
Evangelista, Susan. “Jessica Hagedorn and Manila Magic.” MELUS, vol. 18, no. 4, 1993–94, pp. 41–52.
Flora, Nora. "Jessica Hagedorn Looks Back on the Legacy of ‘Dogeaters’." The Nation, 11 Mar. 2020, www.thenation.com/article/culture/jessica-hagedorn-dogeaters-anniversary-interview. Accessed 6 Oct. 2024.
Hagedorn, Jessica, editor. Charlie Chan Is Dead. Penguin, 1993.
---. “Jessica Hagedorn: An Interview with a Filipina Novelist.” Interview by Joyce Jenkins. The Asian Pacific American Heritage: A Companion to Literature and Arts, edited by George J. Leonard. Garland, 1999, pp. 432–39.
Hau, Caroline S. “Dogeaters, Postmodernism and the ‘Worlding’ of the Philippines.” Philippine Post-Colonial Studies: Essays on Language and Literature, edited by Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo and Priscelina Patajo-Legasto. U of the Philippines P, 1993, pp. 113–28.
“Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn.” Asian-American Women Writers, edited by Harold Bloom. Chelsea, 1997, pp. 28–36.
Lee, Rachel C. The Americas of Asian American Literature: Gendered Fictions of Nation and Transnation. Princeton UP, 1999.
Mendible, Myra. “Desiring Images: Representation and Spectacle in Dogeaters.” Critique, vol. 43, no. 3, 2002, pp. 289–304.
Navidad, Ivan. "Jessica Hagedorn: Focusing on Cultural Representation Can Limit Your Humanity."Berkeley News, 3 Oct. 2022, news.berkeley.edu/2022/10/03/jessica-hagedorn-focusing-on-cultural-representation-can-limit-your-humanity. Accessed 6 Oct. 2024.
Quintana, Alvina E. “Borders Be Damned: Creolizing Literary Relations.” Cultural Studies, vol. 13, no. 2, 1999, pp. 358–66.
Shirley, Don. "'Dogeaters' Tackles Chaotic Changes in Philippines." Review of Dogeaters, directed by Michael Greif. Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 15 Sept. 1998. www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-sep-15-ca-22813-story.html. Accessed 6 Oct. 2024.
Zapanta-Manlapaz, Edna, editor. Songs of Ourselves: Writings by Filipino Women in English. Anvil, 1994.