A Rare Case Where a Title Should Have Been Censored
Jessica Hagedorn is a San Francisco-raised author, who has won many awards, and has had much popular success in many genres, including not only poetry, and novels, but also music and films. The first edition of this novel was copyrighted in 1990, and this edition includes a new 2024 introduction by Patrick Rosal.
Rosal’s intro is unhelpful as it takes on a conversational tone, chatting about Jessica’s and Rosal’s families across its first section. The next section attempts to explain the novel, and begins with the abstraction that there are many voices, or “the book is haunted.” The characters are inhabited by at times “mythological figures like the Filipino kapre”, or “colonizers”, or “radio voices reflecting our own desires for love and blood”. A few paragraphs later, Rosal gets to “the book’s plot, if we’re to call it that”. “…A political assassination and Joey Sands himself sees the violent event…” But it is not about the event, but rather “the disparity between witness and testimony. It is about the nature of attention…” Er… I think I’m not going to like this novel, as it seems the narrator’s point is his lack of attention… and this tends to leave to nonsensical narratives… The next section entirely gives up on figuring out the plot and characters, and instead puffs its “slang-mouthed symphony” that is an “elegy” (i.e. lament for the dead?), “urban pastoral, and serenade… recording all the sounds that pass through our rooms…” That’s not good. A novel really should pick some of the sounds, instead of all of them. We can all just listen to the sounds in our rooms if we wanted reality. If we choose to spend time with a novel, we really want the author to choose which of the sounds are the significant ones, and focus on those.
The “Acknowledgements” are addressed from the author, who explains that unlike most Penguin classic authors she is still alive (1949-): “What a joy to have Dogeaters published as a Penguin Classic in my lifetime.” Her Wikipedia page explains that she has a small fraction of Chinese ancestry, which makes the title slightly less offensive. This made me curious to learn just why this novel is using a Chinese slur in its title, so I searched for “Chinese” and found these mentions. On page 53: “his square-jawed, unsmiling face and pretty Chinese eyes heavily made up…” Then, on page 55 we learn: “Captured by Chinese guerrillas and executed for aged war crimes…” Page 57: “Uncle’s no peasant—he’s a city man, born and bred in Manila. Busy with schemes and hustles, his various transactions with the Chinese and the cops, he functions in an opium haze, most days.” “Chinese” is used here as a synonym for Chinese-gangs, which is a pretty culturally-insensitive perspective. Then there is an innocuous visit to a “shabby Chinese restaurant” (68). A discussion about Chinese food follows in the next few pages. Then, another slur, as a character notes “we can’t live in Greenhills”. And another character echoes “with authority”: “Too many Chinese.” Then there is a spotting of a “Chinese mestizo”, or mixed-race person (166). And after more talk about Chinese foods, a more specific mention of “a Chinese-Filipino” (232). Then, the narrator finally reflects about themselves (seemingly), commenting: “my paternal great-grandfather’s name, or my great-grandmother’s. I’ve been told she was Chinese from Macao, that Uncle Cristobal burned the only photographs of her so there is no remaining evidence” (263). And that’s it: these are all the mentions of “Chinese” in this novel. This novel begins with a chapter called “Love Letters” by describing a prestine “American tableau” puffed scene of the “Hollywood’s version of a typical rural Christmas”. Then, the characters move to “the popular Café Espana”, where children with Latin first names are playing after seeing the Americana movie. It ends with an “Ave maria” prayer for “revenge”, which mentions “mangos” and other fruits, as if it is artificially combining Christian theology with Latin American-associated items. The plural term “dogeaters” is never used in the body of this novel outside of the title. The singular “dogeater” is mentioned on page 52: an employer is shouting for Pedro to finish cleaning the toilet, and mop the floors: “Andres shouts improvised curses at the janitor: Pedrong Tamad, Pedrong Headhunder, Pedro the Pagan Dogeater with the Prick of a Monkey and the Brain of a Flea.” Previously, on page 50, there’s a reference to Pedro as somebody who “eats dogmeat”. And in a later scene a narrator sleeps in “a squatter’s hut… I sleep right next to chickens, pigs, goats, and dogs” (57). And many other dog-insults follow.
I cannot read any further into this slang-laden insult-festival. Why did whatever this is win so many awards? The American public tends to cancel people for wearing black-face makeup, and yet this degree of race-based insults is okay because the author is of a mixed race? There is little technical moral difference between eating a dog and a cow, but using a food-preference or a poverty-driven food preference to abuse people who are working for a living, or stereotyping people of a race as being gang-members is pretty-much everything that is wrong with modern hatred. The point of such insults seems to be to devalue the labor of others, and it in practice has allowed women to continue to be paid at $0.80 on a man’s $1. I cannot imagine why Penguin published this novel…
--Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Summer 2024 issue