The literature of Jessica Hagedorn, a Philippine American who emigrated to the U.S. in 1961 at age twelve, often illustr`tes the difficulty in forging individual identity in a culture whose mainstream images often disenfranchise based on ethnicity, sex, and sexuality. The media and other social institutions often provide an ôofficialö definition or label of events, categories that seldom portray the whole story when pitted against reality. In a culture where oppression and patriarchal power serve to define identity and expression, Hagedorn demonstrates in novels like Dogeaters that ôgossip,ö (tsismis in Tagalog) is often the only form of valid discourse open to disenfranchised groups like Filipina women. As Pucha describes it in Dogeaters, gossip serves as ôthe center of our livesö (Hagedorn 66). This analysis will explore how media and gossip serve as a means of identity and voice for disenfranchised women in the works of Jessica Hagedorn.
In Jessica HagedornÆs City Lights, the author reminds us that, as a Filipina-American, ôThere is a border / One cannot cross / Although the guards are not visibleö (Scharf 52). The invisible guards referred to by Hagedorn are present in her other works as well. For these invisible guards are the ruling elite who, through social institutions like the media, convey images and myths that typically serve to define reality and disenfranchise other groups like women or minorities. Both Philippine and American societies are given form by the wildly conflicting social, political, economic and personal interests of their peoples. The dominant images reinforced by the media and powerful elite groups who control such institutions are a form of social, political and economic control. As Mendible (289) argues of HagedornÆs society, ôIn this schizoid context, religious and cinematic images, folk myths, public displays, and private desires overlap and vie for power. Mass-produced images p...