Words Matter

Jessica Hagedorn: Interview by Emily Porcincula Lawsin

I met Jessica Hagedorn for the first time when I was in elementary school. I met her, not in the physical sense, but in a way that an impressionable young Filipina could never forget: in the Seattle Public Library. Every day after school, my parents used to force my brother and me to go to the library near our home until one of them could return from work. I hated reading back then because of this routine. One day, I browsed down an aisle of poetry collections and came across a simple black cloth-bound book with a black-and-white photograph of a burning guitar pasted to the front. The cover read “Dangerous Music by Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn” (Hagedorn 1975). I loved music, and, as a Catholic schoolgirl, I was naturally intrigued by this concept of danger. There were so few Filipino writers published in those days that I read the book over and over every time we went there. A few years later, I had so many overdue books that I couldn’t check out any more, so I used to hide it in different sections of the library. I would come back the next day, and there was my fellow Filipina friend, secretly waiting for me. 1 Jessica Hagedorn Interview by E M I L Y P O R C I N C U L A L A W S I N Now, twenty years later, Jessica Hagedorn has emerged with so many more books and projects that you can no longer get away with hiding them in obscure parts of the library, hoping that no one will notice that they’re missing. Her other poetry and prose collections include Pet Food and Tropical Apparitions (1981), Danger and Beauty: Poetry and Prose (1993), and Four Young Women: Poems by Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn, Alice Karle, Barbara Szerlip, and Carol Tinker (1973). Her first novel, Dogeaters, was nominated for a National Book Award in 1990 and was voted best book of the year by the Before Columbus Foundation. A well-known performance artist, poet, novelist, and playwright, Hagedorn was also a commentator on “Crossroads,” a syndicated weekly magazine on National Public Radio. She studied theater arts at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and has written numerous plays for the stage (Mango Tango, 1978; Where the Mississippi Meets the Amazon, with Ntozake Shange and Thulani Davis, 1978; Tenement Lover: no palm trees/in new york city, 1981; Teenytown, with Laurie Carlos and Robbie McCauley, 1988; Airport Music, with Han Ong, 1993), for television (Chiquita Banana, 1972; A Nun’s Story, 1988), and for radio (Holy Food, 1989). In 1992, she completed the screenplay Kiss Kiss Kill Kill, which later became Fresh Kill, a movie produced and directed by Shu Lea Cheang. She performed with the bands West Coast Gangster Choir (1975–1978) in San Francisco and Gangster Choir (1978–1985) and Thought Music (1988–1992) in New York. In 1993, Hagedorn edited Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction. Her second novel, The Gangster of Love, was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1996. Since those library days, I’ve been fortunate to have met Jessica in person many times and in many places: in Seattle, where her two daughters’ grandparents live; in New York, where she resides; and in Los Angeles, where I interviewed her during a recent literary festival. Her interview reflects the 22 Words Matter notion of movement, through her perceptions of home, choices, and changes in the physical and literary landscape. She is always as vibrant and animated as all the characters in her novels are. E P L Can you tell me about the place where you were born? J H I was born in Manila in 1949. The house that I remember was the one I lived in until we moved to this country. It was in Santa Mesa, a wonderful old section of Manila. Some of the buildings are still there—it’s amazing how Manila changes so much every time I go back. I loved this neighborhood . At that time it included an old church and a lot of houses that had survived World War II. There were these big, old, crumbling houses—the kind we lived in. Ours had this garden, which to me as a child was huge, although, when I went back to look at it, it wasn’t at...