Hagedorn, Jessica - Leonard Casper (essay date July-September 1990)
Leonard Casper (essay date July-September 1990)
SOURCE: Casper, Leonard. “Bangungot and the Philippine Dream in Hagedorn.” Solidarity 127 (July-September 1990): 152-57.
[In the following essay, Casper discusses how food functions as a symbol of economic inequality in the Philippines in Dogeaters and criticizes the novel for its underdeveloped characters and weak narrative structure.]
No one familiar with the culture of the Philippines would underestimate the pleasure, beyond the threshold of taste, that eating provides for its people. The immense variety of available foods conveys a felicitous sense of tropical abundance; the diversity of savory preparations, a heritage drawn from mixed national origins; the surfeit of calories, unconscious compensation for an enervating climate or an expression of the bahala na (come what may) fiesta attitude: consume today what the day provides, let tomorrow take care of itself....
[The entire page is 3460 words long]
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