Judges 5:27

“Oh, in those richest coffers, what abundance
is garnered up for those who, while below,
on earth, were faithful workers when they sowed!”

Because I know we’ve spoken in class about the options an Asian American writer has when writing concerning the language of choice - write in my native tongue to prove a point or write in English to reach the audience that needs to hear the message? - I thought it was interesting to note Jessica Hagedorn’s own choices of creativity in Dogeaters. There are times in the novel where the characters, plotlines, & relationships become so jumbled & interwoven that the purpose behind it all seems on the verge of becoming lost. Rather than worry about what connections Hagedorn herself has to the book, or what purpose each action holds in the context of a Filipino woman, I find myself poring over which Alacran is which & who the speaker is this time & which characters might maybe possibly not be addicted to something.

Which brings me quickly to another point: how necessary are all the “shocks” of Hagedorn’s novel? It’s hard for me to tell what’s excessive for the purpose of being excessive & what actually reflects modern life in the Philippines, & whichever is true, the fact that it’s hard to discern between the two is where Hagedorn loses a lot of her steam. The snippets of non-fictional narrative - or fictionally non-fiction, as in the news articles - are what I see as the main pieces of the book, woven delicately & very purposefully throughout the book at the most opportune times. While much of Dogeaters is scattered, jumpy, or shocking to be shocking, something like President McKinley’s speech (depicted brilliantly in the cartoon above) really keeps the book rooted in time & history. After all, there has to be a point to it all, hasn’t there?