Jessica Hagedorn 1

I'm very subjective when I make comments about our Filipino authors. But understand this: a book and author review is based on opinion and opinions are opinions. I talk about our authors as I see them so don't take my words in generic terms, I know you too have your personal ideas about our authors. The point is, we should not stop reading ourselves and commenting about ourselves. The only way to understand us is to know us and no one else, not the Americans, not the Spaniards, not the British will talk to us about us. It is us. It's a travesty that only now do we see there is something about us that's worth talking about, forever. I mean forever. I have discovered there's fun in reviewing Filipino authors. There is fun in internalizing the minds of our countrymen. Before, we often relied on foreign authors to see a reflection of ourselves, now we don't need a foreign mirror anymore.

Here my friends are the voices of our men and women who, despite the odds of being abandoned and discriminated against by the world editors and publishers and yes, press, they persist, undauntedly write, the Filipino spirit. The Filipino spirit may not sell well but goddarnit it touches the fabric of everyone's life. We just don't know the power within ourselves as a people. We were subjected to foreign dominance for so long we'd forgotten we have our own identities and selves.

So, lets not write according to the American way or the British way or whatever country's way, lets write in our own way. You see, there is a Filipino way, and that is what I'm discovering now as I begin to read more and more our Filipino authors both in the net and in published book forms. And no one takes us to more fascinating Filipino way than Jessica Hagedorn.

I've read three of her books: Charlie Chan is Dead, Dogeaters and The Gangster of Love.

Charlie Chan is Dead inspired me to write more. This book told me the Filipino experience is worth telling.

Dogeaters shocked me. It picked up the mundane Filipino life and elevated it to a magic realism dream-like form that I felt swimming in an endless sea of Filipino existence in one sitting, fast, it moves in different angles so suddenly that you'd end asking 'where am I now?' Dogeaters is the Filipino life abstract by Picasso.

Finally, The Gangster of Love is my discovery of the author herself, in this book, Hagedorn revealed about her immigrant self more than she wanted to perhaps. In the end, I saw the triumph of a very funky and feisty and talented Filipina; also in the end, I felt the sadness of being a Filipino immigrant. The Gangster of Love is the one that made me cry. It tore my heart to pieces. Much the same way The Umbrella Country did to me. Blame it on my 'cotton' heart, but The Gangster of Love is the one closest to the Filipino heart - the Filipino immigrant heart in particular. It reminded me of how lucky I was when I started in America.

to continue...

Alex Maskara is Pinoy

Volume 1