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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 812.54
EAN num: 9781559362153
ISBN number: 1559362154
Label: Theatre Communications Group
Manufacturer: Theatre Communications Group
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 96
Printing Date: December 01, 2002
Publishing house: Theatre Communications Group
Sale Popularity Level: 360213
Studio: Theatre Communications Group
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Product Description:
Jessica Hagedorn has transformed her bestselling novel about the Philippines during the reign of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos into an equally powerful theatrical piece that is a multi-layered tour de force. As Harold Bloom writes, 'Hagedorn expresses the conflicts experienced by Asian immigrants caught between cultures . . . she takes aim at racism in the U.S. and develops in her dramas the themes of displacement and the search for belonging.'
Jessica Hagedorn is a performance artist, poet, novelist and playwright, born and raised in the Philippines. Her novels include Dogeaters (Penguin 1990) which was nominated for a National Book Award and The Gangster of Love (Penguin 1996); a short story collection, Danger and Beauty (City Lights 2002).
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Rated by buyers 
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People condemned colonialism as being the exploitation of one country by another. The dominant power sucked the resources out of the weaker one, paying only a little back in terms of some technology and a semblance of law and order. But I think now we have realized that that economic bloodsucking was only one of the evils of the imperial experience. More subtle, but maybe longer lasting, was the degrading of the self among the dominated. The ruled felt powerless, they felt their whole culture had failed them and offered nothing of a future, while the West (almost always the dominating powers) remained glamorous, powerful, sexy, and almost unreachable. The dominated peoples shucked off their traditions, rejected their pasts, and tried to become Western. If this is only partly true, it is truer of the elites, who could aspire to local power if they mimicked the real rulers. In the post-colonial era some countries adopted Western institutions to benefit themselves, while others took only the outward forms of the West and used them in corrupt ways. If these remarks hold any relevance to post-colonial society, they are even more true of the Philippines, where America held out a vision of "Americanization"---democracy, education, and pop culture---which could not be delivered in reality in a Southeast Asian peasant society that had lived under loose Spanish control for over 350 years before the Yanks arrived.
DOGEATERS is an achingly realistic portrait of Manila society, where nobody wants to be what they are and everyone wants to be somebody else. Identity comes from trashy Hollywood and Manila movies, soap opera is life. The shopping-obssessed elite rejects everything in their own land. The demi-monde leers around every corner. Phoneyness is subsequent to godliness. The riffraff rule. Everyone survives on the edge. Marginal men become mainstream. Snowy Christmas scenes and "Jingle Bells" greet a holiday, but it's all "out there" somewhere; Manila remains hot and humid, home to a Malayo-Polynesian tradition that is walled off and laughed at by the would-be foreigners that dwell in the vast city. Imelda Marcos, a character in the book, collects her shoes and puts up huge "cultural" monuments that commemorate herself. She has no clue about and no sympathy for the problems of her nation. A thinly-disguised Benigno Aquino gets assassinated and everyone betrays everyone else. Everyone turns out to be marginal in the end.
DOGEATERS starts off in a brilliant way. The very first two thirds of the book is exciting and insightful. If you have ever read Vargas Llosa or Lobo Antunes, you will not find Hagedorn at all difficult. Changing narrators and jumping back and forth is part of post-modern literature. Hey, what's so new about that ? I am not at all Filipino, though I have visited that country. OK, I didn't understand most of the Tagalog words tossed into the text without explanation, but you get the sense even so. In the last third, however, the author runs out of ideas. She can't keep up the momentum created through her intense, accurate description of certain classes of Filipino society. The story becomes diffuse and kind of limps across the finish line like "American Graffiti". Still, for anyone who fancies a novel that really opens up a culture quite neglected and unknown in the West, DOGEATERS is a must read.
Rated by buyers 
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Let me preface this by saying that I am Filipino, but have very little knowledge of what life in the Philippines is like, so in many respects this novel breaks new ground for me (although I did recognize much of the Tagalog that Hagedorn uses). That being said, I have to say that this book moves beyond being easily categorized as a transculturation text or something that simply received press because of its introduction of Filipino culture to the American populace (much in the same way that Alvarez and Garcia wrote books that could not be dismissed as simply being Latino-American fiction produced for an ethnic-hungry reading population). The style reminds me of the book "Twelve" in its fast paced movements and I especially liked the way the storylines of all of the characters had a way of intersecting with one another. I loved reading about Joey's character and also liked the way Hagedorn discusses a major problem with many Asian cultures - the problems of navigating the way with which Western culture bleeds into almost every facet of society. Hagedorn writes vivid descriptions of characters struggling with and enjoying the way Western entertainment has become the norm.
Problems with the novel? I guess one major concern is the over-emphasis on explaining what makes a Filipino a Filipino and the constant explanation of every little tidbit of Filipino culture. The way she uses language is well-done and people can understand the Tagalog without any translations, so I wish she had chosen to take a step back and not necessarily explain every cultural tidbit she thought a non-Filipino would not know. If that's what someone wanted they would have purchased a sociology textbook.
In the end, this is an entertaining read that does a good job of playing with narrative forms.
Rated by buyers 
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i thought this book would be interesting. instead, it was too intertwined with daydreams, multiple plots and different characters. it was difficult to read and hard to stay focused.
Rated by buyers 
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The whole idea of the postmodern novel has been rather disintegrated in this book. Hagedorn makes it seem as if giving a slice of life can never reconcile with an actual plot. If anyone has read Salman Rushdie or Marquez, that is obviously untrue. For the other folks, I'm truly sorry you haven't read anything worthwhile written in the past 30 years. In the end the entire theme of coming to age has been hastily written in the last thirty or so pages and everything else before was simple background to the terrible life that most of the characters experienced. If you want something thats almost strikingly similar in style and statire to this novel, read Ishmael Reed's phenominal Mumbo Jumbo.
Rated by buyers -
Hagedorn's noteworthy novel presents a story of the Philippines through a Baroque layering of interconnected plots, as the many characters swirl around in the urban landscape of Manila. As some posters have complained, the plot can be confusing because of the many interconnections. In addition to the many characters, the novel is at times overwhelming because it is so filled with named things: imported foods identified by their national origins, references to Hollywood actors and pop culture figures from both the US and the Philippines, and places in the Philippines. The density of this short novel deliberately challenges the reader to follow along by figuring out the plots' interconnections and the many cultural references. For those who aren't willing to meet the novel half way, it certainly would be easy to become lost or bored. In certain ways, I would compare this novel to the experience of entering a virtual world in which the reader has the freedom to explore a different reality. The reader's job is to engage and connect all the people and things to be found there. It is an effort worth making.
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