Mostly, I liked this book. Jessica Hagedorn writes a sharp satirical sentence, has a wealth of knowledge of "classic" and "campy" American popular culture, and applies both of these skills naughtily/impactfully. I like that Dogeaters tells the story of an identity- and power-fraught nation (the Philippines) allegorically through the daily struggles of its own identity- and power-fraught inhabitants (cross-dressers, nationalist politicians who buy European fashions, etc.). Some of the characters are rather superficially developed, but I suppose that's to be expected in a novel of probably a hundred characters. I would probably read another Hagedorn novel.

And yet... And yet, I wish the book didn't take itself so seriously. I wish when it jumped between characters it didn't also jump, for no apparent reason, between narrative voices (one Joey chapter is told in first-person, the next omnisciently, etc.). I wish Hagedorn critiqued the racist nickname "dogeater" without toying, at several times in the book, with the possibility that it may be a truthful description -- that whenever a dog pads into a scene, she didn't make me worry that it was going to be beaten, bloodied and eaten. I wish in the concluding chapters the book didn't just flash forward through the lives of Joey and Rio, the two main characters, leaving us completely uncertain about the futures of smaller characters.

Am I imposing impossible "wholeness" upon a "hybrid" novel the same way that international social forces expect cultural consistency from a collection of islands that have been occupied, conquered, visited and culturally "assimilated" so many times they themselves don't know "who" they are? Probably. I'll admit freely that I could have read the book more closely, that much of Hagedorn's political project in this novel may have gone undetected or misunderstood by me. And yet, although I liked the book, I can't help but feel like it leaves a lot of questions unanswered.

1.5 stars

The rating on this one kept slipping the more I read. I started with, OK, this might be interesting; moved to, This is totally nonsensical, no more; and culminated in: What the fuckety fuck, I mean, WTF??? WHAT?



This book in a nutshell: BIG. HOT. MESS. Sizzling MESS!

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Rather than write a novel, Hagedorn threw together a series of stories. No, scratch that. These aren't stories. They're vignettes, snatches of lives, bits of memories, crumbs of experience. The problem is that none of it amounts to much, and the chapters certainly don't add up to a book.

There are so many characters (lovers Trini and Romeo, Rio who consistently narrates many of the chapters remembering the Philippines of her childhood, bisexual crackhead Joey, the General and his lewd mistress, the rich political couple who seems to be based on Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, etc.) that we get only glimpses of their lives and can't keep track of the various narratives. There is no actual timeline, no plot. The books seems to take place in the Philippines in the 50s through 80s, but the sense of time is vague at best.



While Hagedorn does paint a striking picture of the bureaucracy and madness of her home country, if this is all you'll ever learn about the Philippines, you're bound to think it's home to a bunch of whores, corrupt politicians, and junkies. And considering that my favorite brother-in-law is from the Philippines, I know that's not true!

I don't understand the purpose of this book? In her attempt to be original and postmodern, Hagedorn loses all sense of what it means to tell a story and tell it in a way that connects with the audience.

it took me forever to read this book but that had nothing to do with the book itself (more to do with teaching, writing, grading, having a baby, being in a play, etc, etc) which was an enjoyable albeit often disturbing read. i feel like i learned something of the culture and history of the phillipines though i probably could have been a bit better informed before i began reading. strong reminiscent of cristina garcia, who i love, and louise erdrich a little bit but more visceral than her novels are in general. i hope to check out more of her books in the future.

'"Think of your daughter’s body as a landscape, a tropical jungle whose moistness breeds this fungus, like moss on trees” the doctor explains.' (31)

'They describe how she jumped in the river, a watery grave black with human shit, every dead thing and piece of garbage imaginable: the rotting carcasses of wild dogs and cats, enormous rats with heads blown off by bullets, broken tree branches and the tangled bouquets of wilted banana leaves, palm fronds, and kalachuchi flowers. When they pulled out my mother’s blue corpse, they say her long black hair was entwined in this mass of slimy foliage and decay, a gruesome veil of refuse dragging on the mud beneath her.' (47)

'The wedding banquet never ends. A nauseating feast for the eyes, as well as the belly and the soul. Oxtails stewed for hours in peanut sauce, egg custards quivering in burnt sugar syrup, silver tureens filled to the brim with steaming hot, black dinuguan … It’s the black blood of a pig she pours on her head, the black pig’s blood stew she bathes in, to mourn the death of a man…' (162)

'He is exhausted by her tirade, too drained and exhausted to argue with her. It is not his place to argue. He is conducting an interview, after all. He will let her go on and on. He will construct from this an intimate profile of Madame, startling and amusing. Even so, a whirl of images nags at him. Bananas and mounds of coconuts, fields of sugarcane, grainy black-and-white footage of sobbing women, women kneeling over open graves, graves piled with the corpses of mutilated men and children.' (231)

This is more like a book reflection, rather than a book review.*

“Can you hear me, my fellow Filipinos? They cannot silence me. They cannot silence you. No more! Tama na! Let us wake from our centuries of sleep. We must act now!” (An excerpt from DOGEATERS, the play, by Jessica Hagedorn)

DOGEATERS, the play adaptation of Jessica Hagedorn’s novel with the same title, explores topics of class, the effects of colonialism, and the effects of long-term elitism and corruption. Set in 1982, Jessica Hagedorn’s diverse characters explore difference social facets of Manila (aside from 2 scenes). There are affluent politicians, powerful commanders, celebrities, beauty queens, exiles, the outcasts, and rebels. Through these characters, Jessica Hagedorn explores the limitations of accessing relevant information through mainstream media. How the media can delude the masses to their country’s harsh reality. And the agony of loving one’s country that continues to be brutalized.

With that said, I feel like I’m experiencing a political awakening. Not just after reading DOGEATERS, but also after reading IN THE COUNTRY by Mia Alvar and even with my ongoing reflection of GUN DEALERS DAUGHTER by Gina Apostol. All these stories talking about the Marcos administration really got me thinking, why didn’t I know much about this growing up in the Philippines? Yes, I was young but still.. I participated in protests to impeach former president Joseph Estrada. Did I really understand what I was protesting when at 11 years old? Was I just trying to be part of a movement?

I feel like I’ve been “asleep” for so long. And now that I’m realizing the heaviness of the injustices and ongoing corruption in the Philippines, I feel that I can’t un-know what I have come to realize. I feel a deep sadness (& love and yearning) for the Philippines. The guilt of being privileged that I wasn’t forced to wake up sooner. That I was able to leave my country easily, when so many people can’t. When so many people are drowning in poverty, dying, being being murdered, being erased. I think about Araw ng mga Bayani (National Heroes’ Day in the Philippines). Who are the “heroes” we celebrate? Who has died for the Philippines that continues to be unrecognized? I finished this book and cried deeply reflecting on this.

BEST BOOK I'VE READ THIS YEAR
BEST BOOK I'VE READ IN...A LONG LONG TIME
WOW OW WOWOWO WOWOWOW

"Dogeaters" by Jessica Hagedorn is a vibrant and kaleidoscopic novel that offers a multi-layered portrayal of the Philippines during the Marcos dictatorship era. Published in 1990, the novel weaves together a diverse cast of characters from various social backgrounds, creating a tapestry that reflects the complex and dynamic nature of Filipino society.

The title, "Dogeaters," is a colloquial term for Filipinos, and it captures the novel's satirical and irreverent tone. Hagedorn's narrative style is rich, incorporating elements of magic realism, historical events, and pop culture references to paint a vivid picture of Manila in the 1950s and 1980s.

The novel explores themes of political turmoil, social inequality, and the clash between Filipino and American cultures. Hagedorn's characters are interconnected, representing a spectrum of experiences—from the glamorous world of celebrities to the gritty realities of life in the slums.

"Dogeaters" is celebrated for its innovative storytelling, blending different genres and perspectives to provide a nuanced commentary on the complexities of Philippine history and identity. The novel received critical acclaim and was nominated for the National Book Award for Fiction, establishing Jessica Hagedorn as a significant voice in contemporary Asian American literature. It remains a compelling and important work that invites readers to reflect on the cultural and political landscape of the Philippines during a pivotal period in its history.

In Jessica Hagedorn’s Dogeaters, characters desultorily emerge and flee, fictionalized news reports commingle with historical narrative, tsismis orients and disorients. The novel has no main character but instead zooms out on a country during a very specific historical moment. Barely held together by a cast of characters embittered by the fraying social fabric of the time, the novel’s fragmented structure appealed to me. The movement of chapters mimicked the movement of the times: circulatory, straying from the linear, driven by a towering sense of dread, that things could come apart at any time.

What Hagedorn captures so well is the simultaneous denials and desires of living captive in an emerging industrial and dictatorial country. Rio and Joey, who figure in many of the chapters, represent this dichotomy: the former is a wide-eyed adolescent who dreams of making (as opposed to starring in) movies and who often questions the values which make up the Filipino upper-middle class. Meanwhile, Joey, a scavenger locked in a culture of fatalism, is pure id—chasing after a nameless high, fearing boredom more than anything else.

This is a novel about disappearances, but it is also a novel about the fraught connections we, as a society, make out of the logic (or illogic) of gossip. The consequences of this become clear in the penultimate chapter, where the novel's themes of myth-making, incoherence, and disillusionment come to a head. Like the rest of the novel, this chapter is also very tongue-in-cheek. If not for Hagedorn’s shrewd sense of humor (evidenced from the get-go, in the title), this novel could have easily transgressed to parody.

Ultimately, I enjoyed this novel, not despite of but because of its detours. Lyrical and unstable, Dogeaters creates a collage of narratives which in the end crystalize into the impression that whatever stories and accounts we tell of our country, if taken to the extremes, can easily pass into the zone of danger.

Dogeaters takes us back to the era of the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines. Jessica Hagedorn gives us a fast-moving, visceral, at times disorienting, and frequently surreal portrait of the Philippines under harsh repression.

The novel shows us the brutality of the regime by not showing us the dictatorship directly (for the most part), and I think this made it more powerful. Instead, we follow around the denizens of Manila as they just live their lives. We peek into the upper echelons of society with the president’s cronies and their high society wives and kids. They’re hanging out at the country club, gossiping about each other, watching American movies, trying to catch a husband, and throwing parties. But we also tag along with the regular folk—the working class, the wannabes, the druggies living on the margins of society as they fall in love, try to chase dreams, and just fight to live another day.

Meanwhile, through the gossip, throwaway comments, radio soap opera excerpts, and commercial jingles, readers get the sense of the sinister reality of the country. Seeping into the story are allusions to and news of revolutionary guerillas working to destabilize the government, an upright senator’s opposition to the corrupt, dirty regime, the whispers of the latest detentions, torture, and killings by this new shadowy internal security force that the president has put together to silence the opposition.

Even when they don’t have anything to do with the regime, all of the characters are affected by it in one way or another. It ensnares them and shapes their fates.

# Dogeaters - Jessica Hagedorn

Dare I say that Dogeaters is a smoking gun in favor of the argument that good literature is entertainment not torture? Jessica Hagedorn’s explosive romp through the points of view of motley characters during the Martial Law years in the Philippines is masterful and surgical as it is jarring and traumatic. Each page existed merely as a painful reminder of my annual visits to my cranky dentist who cuts and drills through nerve, teeth and gums with much vigor and aplomb notwithstanding my pleas to slow down. Hagedorn's technique, style and skills are undoubtedly topnotch in Dogeaters but the overall reading experience leaves a ringing in the ears and saliva dripping in the mouth. This fiction is punishment and must be discarded as trash despite the quality of its writing and fidelity to English grammar and idioms.

I would not brand Dogeaters as pretentious writing in the Picasso style of dismembered and broken narratives if painting were transformed into written art or vice versa. The constant change in tone, narrators, focus and thesis may induce nausea but that is it to be expected from a work that tries its best to mimic vomit and feces. Without question the book achieves the lofty goals that it set out for itself: be as unpredictable, illogical and confusing to the reader as possible.

It does not help that a book about the Philippines strives mightily to alienate a Filipino reader by imposing a sketch of society that does not at all match reality. I get the cute references to Filipino quirks that foreigners might find amusing and funny. But the caricatures have been radically exaggerated as to render unrecognizable the appealing qualities of the Filipino.

As a Filipino, I take serious offense about how this book peddles lies about the Filipino by promoting isolated cases of weird behavior and custom that are egregious but not at all representative of the country’s zeitgeist as a whole. True, Filipinos are a fatalistic, supine, corrupt, superstitious and shallow race. But to throw together the extreme parts of these traits into the fiery cauldron of Western sensibilities and bias ultimately creates the sorry impression that the Filipino is no more than a pathetic and miserable oddity to laugh at and pity. The choice of the title Dogeaters shows how the author spins unfounded rumors about Filipinos into large and generalized truth claims. For the record, Filipinos are not rabid consumers of dog meat even during the dark years under the Marcos regime. This canard is just one of many that exist in the book.


Rating: 1.8/5
Read: 06 May 2018
Projected Re-Read: N/A

tl;dr the full force of the Filipino identity is bent, shattered, and refashioned in Hagedorn’s earnestly chaotic dogeaters

You know our famous expression, imported? It’s always been synonymous with ‘the best,’ in my country…” (p. 252)

There’s a daytime entertainment show that plays every single day on the Filipino Channel. Showtime is a variety show where an ensemble of young hosts sing, dance, and do often pun-driven comedy. They are led by a charismatic and extremely funny nonbinary actor whose stage name is Vice Ganda (“beautiful vice in English”); while he doesn’t use the terminology, he is by all accounts a drag queen. In the evening, we get ABS-CBN news, whose broadcasting would make the FTC queasy – not sure how the direct shots of crime scenes (blood often included) and uncensored footage of post-conviction victim-perpetrator interactions (usually the families of victims yelling at criminals tied to a chair, which often escalate to them beating the criminal) are allowed to be showed on Western air, but it is what it is.

All this to say, Filipino media culture is a chaos of multitudes, a riot of emotional extravagance, from kids effortlessly channeling Whitney and Beyonce in karaoke competitions, to truly horrifying depictions of natural disaster aftermaths and rampant government corruption. It’s all so western (ahem, American)!

Dogeaters is Jessica Hagedorn’s sensationally-titled chronicle of Metro-Manila life in a certain period of time, but the craziness of Filipino TV can be traced to the volatility of that time period. Postwar, mid-occupation (by the United States), Philippines, living already with over a century of occupation and resistance to its name.

The Philippines, as a country, is not a practical concept: over 7000 islands and 183 spoken languages that are barely mutually-comprehensible across a border shorter than the West Coast of the United States (as a Filipino-American myself, I am fluent in exactly zero of the near 200-languages spoken in my “mother country” because United States occupation established “monolingual English speaking Filipinos” as a status symbol). Dogeaters understands the chaos of the Filipino identity and tells a fractured, kaleidoscopic story across characters of different castes, and various forms and mediums: a teleplay, a monologue, a dream sequence, a novela thriller. Hagedorn’s portrait of Manila is ambitious, colorful, audacious, and kind of a mess, just like the sense of national identity itself.

Rio is the first character we see, and a kind of insert for Hagedorn herself. We are plopped pwet-first into an American-Filipino cultural mess. We also meet Joey Sands, a DJ/rentboy/gogo connected to the criminal underbelly of Metro Manila, and members of the Alacran clan, whose kingpin Severo Alacran’s wealth informs the many of lives (and fates) of Dogeaters’s Manila. In alternating ridiculous TV plots, harrowing criminal sequences, and everything in between, Hagedorn skirts satire; it’s not satire: this mess of the serious blended in with the unserious inside of an American blender is what being Filipino is actually like.

My main issue with Dogeaters is that the writing often falls short of its ambitions. The depiction of Filipino cultures and customs feel trapped between making concessions to a Western gaze and nodding towards folks-in-the-know. Constantly, folks are eating foods that you may not know based on the name; it’s a crapshoot whether Hagedorn will simply mention a food by name or describe it without naming it. The food dinuguan is made into a lofty symbol towards the end of the book when action begins to reach its climax, and it’s portrayed as this shock-value metaphor for violence and eating (the actual flavor of the dish – savory, pleasant, and delicious – makes the metaphor fall flat for me). The descriptions of character actions feel too straightforward, their motivations too concretely communicated. When we get to Joey Sands’ chapters, the gravitas and suspense of his ordeal is made somewhat inert with everything in his head so clearly explained to us.

Is Dogeaters a success? It’s probably a book that I admire more than I enjoy. It’s sensational, loud, and so so so extra. It’s a bacchanal of human violence, a novela of a novel. While the writing doesn’t always hit, Hagedorn’s portrayal of the Filipino identity made a trip to her wild looking-glass Metro Manila worthwhile.

This book was very fragmented, there is an attempt to bring things together in the end but it fell flat for me, the best part was the last couple of pages which was an ingenious prayer, otherwise it was like a stereotypical tale of a third world country. Users, losers and abusers from opposing classes show a dismal life: corruption, prostitution, petty and not so petty crimes committed by low-lifes and people in power sprinkled with familiar Filipino symbols like adobo and kalamansi. It was not a terrible read, just OK.