Jessica Hagedorn Quotes

• We didn’t have television until I was about eight years old, so it was either the movies or radio. A lot of radio drama. That was our television, you know. We had to use our imagination. So it was really those two things, and the comics, that I immersed myself in as a child.

  Jessica Hagedorn

• There were also horror shows on the radio. Very terrifying and thrilling to me as a kid. They had all these creepy sound effects. They would come on at ten o’clock at night, and I just would scare myself to death.

  Jessica Hagedorn

• There are certain regions in the country where the indigenous people eat dogs.

  Jessica Hagedorn

• My identity is linked to my grandmother, who’s pure Filipino, as pure as you can probably get. And that shaped my imagination. So that’s how I identify.

  Jessica Hagedorn

• Music is very influential to my writing, as are theater and film.

  Jessica Hagedorn

• Life is not simple, and people can’t be boxed into being either heroes or villains.

  Jessica Hagedorn

• I’m preparing for a multimedia theater piece, Airport Music, that’s coming up in New York City.

  Jessica Hagedorn

• I’m an underdog person, so I align myself with those who seem to be not considered valuable in polite society.

  Jessica Hagedorn

• I think for a lot of so-called post-colonial peoples, there’s a feeling of not being quite legitimate, of not being pure enough.

  Jessica Hagedorn

• I love writing dialogue, and I think a lot of my writing is visual and very cinematic.

  Jessica Hagedorn

• c helped contemporary fiction evolve to what it is now. All I know is that the range of voices that are being heard and published is a lot more diverse than when I was coming up.

  Jessica Hagedorn

• I don’t believe in sampling some Tibetan music just to make it sound groovy, but you do your homework, you understand what you’re doing with it.

  Jessica Hagedorn

• I also identify as a Latin person, a person who has Latin blood.

  Jessica Hagedorn

• Hybridity keeps me from being rigid about most things. It has taught me to appreciate the contradictions in the world and in my life. I scavenge from the best.

  Jessica Hagedorn

• Growing up in the Philippines, I loved all kinds of movies. We had a very healthy film industry there when I was a child. It’s now gotten very limited. They only make action movies and hard-core exploitation movies. Women get raped; men get shot.

  Jessica Hagedorn

• Everything matters. Time is precious.

  Jessica Hagedorn

• But I think there’s a genuine joy, too, a sense that no matter what, even if my stomach’s growling, I’m going to dance. That’s what I want to leave people with at the end of the play. After all this, people still know how to live.

  Jessica Hagedorn

• Becoming a mother has helped make me a tougher, stronger writer.

  Jessica Hagedorn

Jessica Hagedorn (18)

Birth:	1949
Nationality:	American, Filipino
Profession:	Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Screenwriter

About

Jessica Tarahata Hagedorn was born in Manila, Philippines. She is a Filipino-American novelist, playwright, poet, screenwriter and multimedia performance artist. Moving to San Francisco in 1963, she received her education at the American Conservatory Theater training program. She moved to New York City in 1978. She has written several novels include: Dogeaters (Won- American Book Award in 1990, Nominated- National Book Award in 1991), The Gangster of Love, Dream Jungle, and Toxicology. She has written other books include: Four young women (poetry), Dangerous Music, Pet Food & Tropical Apparitions (poetry, Won- American Book Award), and Danger and beauty (collection). She has written several plays include: Mango Tango, and Dogeaters. She has written a film, entitled Fresh Kill.

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