Hilarious, zany, and outlandish depiction of the Philippines in a time of political crisis and drama.

Quite a frenetic and schizophrenic book. I can see that Hagedorn was attempting to create an intricate picture of the mostly seedy underbelly of Manila but it felt a bit crowded. For example, there is a kind of *gasp* moment near the end that I just shrugged at because I couldn't remember why that character was important. I don't know that it benefited from its large cast of characters. I also don't like feeling cheated at the end and I felt a bit of that reading the two conflicting accounts of what occurred.

Thankfully Hagedorn does spend a little more time with Rio and Joey, probably the two more saner characters in the book. Still, I have to think Hagedorn is trying to say something when 90% of the supporting cast consists of druggies, thugs, colonial elitists, corrupt politicians, loveless neglectful family members, and shallow, vapid women. The book reads more like interweaving vignettes than a novel, and while that makes for exciting reading I do wish Hagedorn spent more time developing Joey and Rio.

I think this book would improve with a second reading, if only because this time I'd be more familiar with the characters and be able to remember them better by the book's end.
___________________________

Must amend the above based on something I just read out of Lisa Lowe's Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics which I think is a great way to look at the troublesome format of the book: Dogeaters offers scenes, dialogues, and episodes that are not regulated by plot, character, progress or resolution. Both the gossip [tsismis] it features and the format of the novel itself move in a horizontal, or metonymic, contagion rather than through the vertical, or metaphorical, processes of referentiality and signification. Spontaneous, decentered, and multivocal, gossip is antithetical to developmental narrative. It seizes details and hyperbolizes their importance; it defies the notion of information of property" (115). And later: "The association in Dogeaters of insurrection with gossip may refer implicitly to a history of guerrilla strategies that were not centrally organized and to different modes of political practice that have been obscured by the stage of oppositional party nationalisms" (119).

So my demand for more character development can in one sense be seen as a reaction to my looking for a western developmental plotline in a non-western text. Regardless, I still want to read more about Joey and Rio. :)

One part telenovela, one part newspaper serial, one part culture clash and one part comedy of errors, Dogeaters by Jessica Hagedorn was definitely one of the most interesting books I’ve read this year. Winner of the American Book Award and nominated for the National Book Award in 1991, Dogeaters is definitely a unique introduction to the Philippines.

The novel reminded me a lot of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City series in it’s breath of coverage and it’s fast paced serialized type chapters. Although I can only remember a few of the character’s names and hardly any of the specifics of the novel – the stereotypes of Filipino culture and the obsession with American pop-culture definitely came across strong and somewhat overwhelming at times. It didn’t help that a lot of the cultural references were a little too specific and a little too dated for me to fully understand them.

Click here to continue reading on my blog The Oddness of Moving Things.

I can't give a full evaluation of this book as of yet, but I can say that if you're at all interested in learning about gritty side of Filipino politics, history, and identity, then this book is for you. The language is cryptic, yet bold, and maybe even brash. The way that Hagedorn is able to tell the individual stories of people from various levels of society is masterful. I'm reading this slowly, as it is very rich in detail and I don't want to miss anything!

Dizzying, in a good way, I guess. A good look into class struggle and privilege, especially during Martial Law. Got a little bit confusing for me but commendable with its rich storytelling and characterization.

A slice of life story of Filipino people lives during a change in their country. Following a young girl looking back at her life, a wannabe star, a sex worker, and rich people.

I read Hagedorn's anthology, Manila Noir, last year and liked she was showcasing Filipino literature. And I thing this book is the most popular Filipino book out there.

I had a problem writing a summary for this novel because the story was everywhere. There were a lot of storylines and characters going on, and most seemed to not connected and from different books. I did like the insight of the Filipino culture and the country. But parts I felt confuse on who was who and why they were important. I liked parts of the story, my favorite was Joey Sand's storyline most.

Overall 3.5 out of 5 dogs.

There are novels you devour and novels that devour you. Hagedorn consumes; her appetite is voracious and her feast is ours. Dogeaters is alive. The narrative is a polyphonic, frenetic movement of place and character. Readers never really get our bearings. The fluidity of the landscape and people slip through our fingers. No one and nothing can be pinned down. Hagedorn hasn't so much captured on the page a country, its people and cultures at a specific moment in history, but she has tapped into the pulse and breath. Readers are gobbled up along with the story, the characters, words and images into the Philippine farrago.

(Post note: Only an hour after finishing the book, Time posts the following article:
http://www.time.com/time/world/articl...

An American Novel Of The Philippines

"Dogeaters" (1990), the first novel of Jessica Hagedorn, was nominated for the National Book Award. Hagedorn (b. 1949) was born in Manilla and moved to the United States in 1963. She is a poet as well as a novelist; in 1998, she also transformed "Dogeaters" into a play. I became interested in this book because I hadn't read any other novels set in the Philippines.

The novel is set in Manilla from the mid 1950s through early 1960s. It is of the middling length of 250 pages, but with its writing style and many characters the novel makes for slow, difficult reading. The plot develops slowly; the book is almost more a series of short inter-related vignettes than a novel. The voicings change markedly and quickly with two first person narrations together with lengthy sections told in the third person. The writing is highly descriptive and enjambed. The book has long run-on sentences and paragraphs full of at different times names, lists, adjectives -- the types of lengthy series that would not be out of place in a Walt Whitman poem. Each section of the story, and the novel as a whole, features many different characters. It is difficult, and probably intentionally so, to keep the characters straight.

Much of the book is a depiction of Philippine life which Hagedorn develops from its poorest to its most elite, powerful levels. The scenes include poor rural shacks and apartments, stressful low paying jobs, drug dens, and bars which are havens for gay prostitution. The wealthy element of Manilla life, the generals. political leaders, and owners of property also are portrayed with their control of the poor part of the population.

The book emphasizes American and earlier Spanish influence on the Philippines as a result of colonization. The influence is reflected in the more materialistic aspects of American life, including products and brand names, soap operas on television, popular songs and American film. These elements are presented at length and are shown to have a debasing effect on Philippine life as, one would assume, the author finds they have on life in the United States. Earlier Spanish culture is also reflected unfavorably in many ways, including the large influence of the Church. The book also suggests a native Philippine culture, under the centuries of colonization, which probably comes through at its clearest in the many untranslated words of Tagalog that appear frequently at many points in the story.

The early sections of the book largely describe the characters, their relationships, and their interactions. Only at about mid-point does a plot line begin to come clear as the author explores the dictatorial and oppressive character of the Philippine regime. The unhappy political situation becomes increasingly juxtaposed with the lives of the many protagonists, both poor and rich.

The collage-like, surreal aspect of the book is in part effective. The author means to show the unfortunately confused nature of Philippine culture and government with the influence of colonialism and American crassness competing against the efforts of the Philippine people to find their own way and sense of nationhood. The writing style also makes the book slow moving and unfocused.

I had mixed feelings about this novel and its message. I thought at times that the work was more interested in conveying an anti-American message of the sort that has become all-too-common in our culture and literature than it was interested in depicting Philippine life. But this tendency is balanced by an element in the book that shows the Philippine struggle to develop their country in the face of great difficulty. The focus is more on the local people than on the alleged perniciousness of American influence. The book encourages thought on a number of issues, including religion, marriage, the role of women, the nature of beauty and physical appearance, the pervasive and unfavorably depicted homosexual presence in the novel, and the nature of government that get beyond pat stereotypes and fixed answers.

Christopher Lehmann- Haupt's wrote a perceptive review of "Dogeaters" in the March 22, 1990, "New York Times". Lehmann-Haupt notices the blame America character of some of the book, observing that Hagedorn's vision and anti-Americanism may "border on ideological tendentiousness". He finds the book redeemed by its following closely upon the historical record once the story finally gets underway and by its gradually developing character as a Bildungsroman -- the story of the moral growth of the principal character in the novel. Lehmann-Haupt refers to the growth of one of the first person narrators, a young woman named Rio Gonzaga, whose voice opens the novel and who, as did Hagedorn, ultimately emigrates to the United States where Rio enjoys a successful life but never marries and remains a religious skeptic.

"Dogeaters", in sum is a less than fully successful novel. On the whole, I enjoyed the novel as a result of the beauty of some of the writing and as a result of its portrayal of Philippine life.

Robin Friedman

This book is beyond offensive and quite frankly, is poorly written. It is one of those novels where the author just tries to be provocative and artsy in order to pander to Western stereotypes of Filipino culture. There is nothing wrong with providing critical commentary about a society, but at least make it constructive and heartfelt, rather than crass and directionless.

I really, really liked this book. After reading Rizal's Noli Me Tangere (Touch Me Not), one distinction was at the many similarities these both had. One can even say that it is a contemporary renewal of it.

Unlike Noli, this was way easier and certainly more, how ever disturbing it can be, enjoyable to read. From Rio, to Pucha, Baby, Joey, Lolita Luna, the characters are so rich in their stories, its truly compelling.Even though you have to read more in between the lines to fully grasp at what Hagedorn wants to get to, she does it in a very subtle way, that I loved.

Truly loved this novel. I like literature that can hold a political social commentary on society, and Dogeaters did that, flawlessly.

I really enjoyed this book. The plot and characters keep you enthralled in what is happening but Hagedorn also makes a point to add social commentary and question the post-colonial environment.

I appreciated her writing techniques (ie. the repetitive use of "because" in The Coconut King, the stream of consciousness in The Presidents Wife has a Dream, and the integration of Filipino languages, slang, Spanish and English). I also really loved her pairing of dreams, "reality," texts, newspaper articles etc. to create her story and a depiction of the Philippines.

ito muna: too bad i've read gina apostol's bibliolepsy before this one; this one paled and then got shy