DOGEATERS

by Jessica Hagedorn ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 26, 1990

Tour-de-force debut novel by performance artist and small, press author Hagedorn: a kaleidoscopic view of Manila society--high and low--in which sad and sordid realities are tempered by humor and immense vitality. In Hagedorn's dizzying tour of Manila--presented through a range of voices and points of view--Filipinos insult one another with the epithet ""dogeater"" or the command ""Go back to the jungle!""; Spanish ancestry represents respectability, and anything American--Heinz Pork'N'Beans and Del Monte succotash are expensive, prestige foods--represents success; upperclass girls interpret their lives against a half-understood scrim of American movies, while the servants sigh over local radio romances and their mothers spend their lives in idle gossip; the dictator's wife tells a foreign journalist all about her shoes; a triumphant beauty queen can't stop crying and finally finds peace with the Communist guerrillas; a shantytown street-kid/drug-addict--son of a prostitute and a black American G.I.--has big dreams based on his career as a disco D.J. and the money from his occasional homosexual tricks; and a talent-show contestant (as well as small-time heel) from a poor village is framed for the assassination of an opposition senator--a crime that links the destinies of many of the novel's characters. Hagedorn's satire condemns social injustice--along with childish pursuit of glamour--while her delight in Filipino culture comes through in her exuberant prose, bubbling with phrases in Spanish, Tagalog, and other dialects: a spicy stew of a novel.

Pub Date: March 26, 1990

ISBN: 014014904X

Page Count: -

Publisher: Pantheon

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1990

Categories: FICTION