This jazzy, sardonic novel depicts the nightmare world that was the Philippines of the Marcoses. Its terrain is familiar to us from the writings of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Manuel Puig: a lush, fantastical, overheated landscape, where the fractured lives of the poor are rendered palatable solely by dreams. Rich and poor, everyone sells something here; everyone has a price. The common dream of a myriad group of characters--bored teenagers, timid shop girls, male prostitutes on the make--is that hollowest of all modern apotheoses, ``stardom.'' A visiting filmmaker, a German degenerate, buys the services of a pretty boy, who soliloquizes: ``I'll have it all worked out, soon. I know I will. I have to. I'll hit the jackpot with one of these guys. Leave town. Get lucky . . . . Soon.'' This is a novel about the death of the good life of the soul: of all virtue, meaning, and hope. Exceptionally well written and emotionally wrenching. Recommended.-- David Keymer, SUNY Inst. of Technology, Utica
Praise for Dogeaters:
“Hagedorn unwaveringly paints a menacing world, one that should sound an urgent alarm to us now—but the book is so beautiful! It’s painted in the shimmering, fierce, lush colors of memory and longing; it has the radiant evanescence of a dream—and it leaves behind the lingering authority of a dream’s veiled warning.”
—The New York Review of Books
“A surrealistically hip epic of Manila . . . Combines narrative drive with a lyric sensibility.”
—The San Francisco Chronicle
“As sharp and fast as a street boy’s razor . . . a rich small feast of a book.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Dogeaters erupts from its pages, 50 percent voluptuous fever dream, 50 percent heart-stopping nightmare, 100 percent reality. The hallucinatory vision of this colonial world—the crucible of the innocent, the rapacious, the collaborators, the oblivious, the martyred—feels flawless, irrefutable. Hagedorn writes with exhilarating stylistic dexterity, deep compassion, humor that ranges from gentle and affectionate to fire-breathing, and immense grace. The book is every bit as astonishing as it was when it first appeared thirty years ago, and unfortunately much more pertinent—a piercing warning signal, now that we have installed a deranged and brutal pseudo-populist dictator in our own country.”
—Deborah Eisenberg, author of Your Duck is My Duck
“Possibly the most brutally, hilariously accurate portrait of post-colonial Jamaica I’ve ever read. And it’s a novel about the Philippines.”
—Marlon James, author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf
“Unquestionably a classic, Dogeaters is a tour-de-force that remains as relevant and revelatory as it did when it first gut-punched the literary industry 30 years ago. Its restless prose, its collisions of peoples, cultures, and histories, and its resolute memory-keepers, such as Rio, have much left to say about our troubled times.”
—Rigoberto González, author of The Book of Ruin
“Jessica Hagedorn has been an inspiration to me for nearly thirty years, ever since I read Dogeaters. It is as remarkable now as it was then, an original, raw, and wild novel that has held its power and demands to be read.”
—Viet Thanh Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer
“A shimmering, ferocious, funny, campy, disturbing, violent, benevolent, dazzling beast of a tale. Dogeaters was a joy to read the first time, but rereading it today made me realize Jessica Hagedorn is the divine mother goddess of novelists.”
—Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street
“Dogeaters is a fine achievement on a very serious scale . . . This is the definitive novel of the encounter between the Philippines and America and their history of mutual illusion, antagonism, and ambiguous affection. It is a rich and satisfying work and certainly among the best novels I have read this year.”
—Robert Stone, author of Dog Soldiers
“I still vividly remember when Dogeaters came out—it was instantly and rightfully hailed a groundbreaking American classic. Jessica Hagedorn has shaped our ways of understanding modern America and reading American literature. Her Dogeaters is indelible, and indispensable in the American canon.”
—Gina Apostol, author of Insurrecto
“Mixing real-life ghouls with phantoms from the past . . . Hagedorn captured that mixture of love, laughter and sadness that stirs in every Filipino's heart. [Dogeaters] is a mournful, obsessive ballad about Filipino lives left in postcolonial disarray.”
—Randy Gener, The New York Times
“[Dogeaters] secur[ed] Hagedorn’s reputation as an important voice in Asian American letters. The narrative style impressed readers as well as critics: a multiple-character point of view that wove American pop icons into the Filipino cultural fabric, it illuminated the chaotic and wondrous post-colonial Manila of the 1950s.”
—Los Angeles Review of Books
“No nonfiction book is likely to capture the cultural psychosis of the Phillippines nearly as well as this exceptiona novel about growing up there.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“Entertaining and compelling. . . . At the end, you emerge from its intense, dreamlike world feeling as if you’ve been to the Philippines.”
—The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Hagedorn transcends social strata, gender, culture, and politics in this exuberant, witty, and telling portrait of Philippine society.”
—The San Diego Union
“A tour-de-force debut . . . A kaleidoscopic view of Manila society—high and low—in which sad and sordid realities are tempered by humor and immense vitality . . . A spicy stew of a novel.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“The book succeeds on the strength of its characterization . . . Hagedorn's unflinching view of Manila . . . is leavened by ironic, often humorous observations.”
—Publishers Weekly
“The quintessential Filipino American novel.”
—The Nation
