From 1990, this is a precursor to a lot of today's Filipino-American writing. The book follows several different characters in Marcos-era Manila, ranging across the class spectrum. It's similar in style (as my wife pointed out) to Tommy Orange's "There There", following an almost overwhelming number of different characters, whose stories ultimately come together loosely. This approach, while distracting at times, does effectively combat mainstream American culture's tendency to create a monolithic view of groups of people of color--intentionally showing a wide diversity of individuals. Also much like with Orange's book, I felt I had favorite characters that I wished I could spend more time with--particularly Rio and her Lola.

While Hagedorn doesn't shy away from showing the brutal and violent side of the dictatorship, I thought one of the most interesting parts of the book was the way she foregrounded media (TV, movies, and music) and its various roles in the lives of the characters--cultivating certain types of hopes and dreams, cultivating certain standards of beauty, and serving as a contested object that the dictatorship (and Imelda Marcos in particular) used to maintain legitimacy and encourage certain ideas. The passage near the end with a journalist interviewing Imelda Marcos was absolutely my favorite part and was a fascinating portrait of an individual projecting "soft power"--actually in a way that reminded me not a little of Donald Trump.

If you don't know any Filipinos and read this book, you would everyone from this country is barbaric, especially the men. Maybe this is how Hegedorn feels about her parent's home country? There is a lot of beauty in the Philippines and within Filipino culture. You would have never known from reading this.

Do you know the feeling you get when your drugs run out and you're not in love with that German director john you've been sleeping with and your pimp of an uncle is screwing you over again and your whole country is corrupt and your Lana Turnerish mom is breathing down your neck to start acting like a proper young lady already? Well, you will after you read Dogeaters. It's a crazy fast paced dissection of Manila society circa 1950s/60s, and it rocks.

The good: A patchwork of different perspectives and experiences of life in Manila in the 50s/60s under martial law. Most of the scenes and characters are quite gritty, detailed, and realistic -- Hagedorn has a talent for bringing the vivid sights, sounds, smells, and people of Manila to life. Some of the prose is absolutely poetic and chilling. I also like that she includes snippets from a fictional Manila newspaper, which further adds to the feeling of being haphazardly plunged into that time period. I like how the book starts out very tangential to the realities of martial law, but as it continues, the effects are seen more in the lives of the characters. The sheer number of characters and plotlines that she switches between gives the reader a sense that we have just gotten a jumbled collage of glimpses into another time and place.

The bad: Sometimes difficult to follow, since there are so many characters and plotlines. In addition, she switches frequently between 1st and 3rd person, and there are many different 1st person narrators throughout the book. The sheer number of stories going on also means that we don't get to know most of the characters on a very deep level. I also didn't like that most of the characters we get to know well are upper class. The author is clearly critical of the excesses of the upper classes, yet she unfortunately puts too much focus on their perspectives. I would have liked to get a more balanced sample of characters. In addition, many characters in the book - especially women and those of the lower/middle classes - are victimized and suffer immensely. Which makes it a much bigger problem that there's not enough time spent on understanding the individual characters deeply. The reader is shocked by the brutality but we are never given the time to digest or understand the effects on a deep level. I think this is one negative aspect of the frenetic, ever-switching-focus style of this book. Lastly, I'm not a big fan of the title of the book, "Dogeaters", which is a pejorative term. Combined with the nonstop portrayal of greed, misery, and corruption throughout the book, the characters aren't given much chance to throw off the baggage that comes with such a term.

In summary, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in Philippine literature and the martial law period, but would caution that reading this book will just raise more questions than provide answers or understanding about this complicated period. Perhaps that's not a bad thing and I hope readers of Dogeaters will dig further.