Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Hagedorn, Jessica - Susan Evangelista (essay date winter 1993-1994)


Hagedorn, Jessica - Susan Evangelista (essay date winter 1993-1994)

Susan Evangelista (essay date winter 1993-1994)

SOURCE: Evangelista, Susan. “Jessica Hagedorn and Manila Magic.” MELUS 18, no. 4 (winter 1993-1994): 41-52.

[In the following essay, Evangelista explores the elements of magical realism in Hagedorn's writings, particularly as they relate to the author's identity as a Filipina immigrant living in the United States.]

In 1975, a then relatively unknown Filipino-American poet named Jessica Hagedorn wrote a poem called “Song for My Father” in which life in Manila took on some of the surreal appearance of life in some Latin-American city under siege:

dope dealers are executed
in public
and senators go mad
in prison camps
the nightclubs are burning
with indifference
curfew draws near
soldiers lurk in jeeps
of dawn warzones
as the president's daughter
bogies nostalgically
under the gaze
of sixteen smooth bodyguards
and decay is forever
even in the rage
of humorless revolutionaries...

[The entire page is 4788 words long]

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