Jessica Hagedorn Quotes

I'm not a writer who works off an outline. I don't do file cards. Some writers know where they're going when they sit down to write a novel. I know there are certain things I want to include, but I'm character driven and if the characters keep moving and living and growing on me, the story unfolds. It's like a puzzle which starts falling into place. But I never know where I'm going when I start.

(KASJ: What kinds of real-life events are useful for fiction?) JH: All of it is useful. It's very personal what will move one artist and what will move another. I think you can find [art] in both the smallest thing and in the most horrific catastrophe. It could be something as simple as the mystery of seeing someone enter a room, down to a major historical event like the Tasaday controversy or the Vietnam War. Everything is fodder. (The Women's Review of Books, March 2004)

Having access to all these languages and dialects enriched my already wild imagination and made me curious—about who I was, about the world, about the Philippines I knew and the many different ways I could tell a story. (2019)

For other people perhaps it was something else that brought them to certain conclusions about their lives and their identities. But, for me, film was truly one of the more powerful sources of entertainment, enlightenment, disillusionment. So, I use it a lot. In the writing of Dogeaters, especially, the movies were there because they were absolutely part of the fabric of my memory. Once I found that key, all the doors started swinging open in my imagination.

If I were to write with that agenda in mind, then I'd destroy the writing. No, I write really because I have to and if the writing also destroys some of those myths and subverts forms and makes people question the very idea of the writer, the woman, the Filipino American, the whatever, great! (INTERVIEWER: Where does art have to come from to accomplish those kinds of ends? If you set out directly to accomplish them, you probably wouldn't have writing that is, in your opinion, worth reading? So, where does it have to come from?) JH: It has to come from the deepest, deepest, deepest insides of your soul. And it's got to be brutally honest. It's like pornography. You know it when you are doing it and you know when you're bullshitting. You know when you're being self-conscious and contrived and forcing something to be there because you want to make sure that people get the point. You know when that's happening. But if you just really listen to yourself and to your characters, you don't go for the easy stuff.

We all need money to live and continue to make our art. And sometimes these prizes and awards can be a sort of validation. But money and prizes don’t mean that the work you produce is going to be any good. Sometimes those accolades actually get in the way. The lean times are often when the good stuff happens. So, let’s not get fixated on fame and money. Write like you’re on fire, be fearless, dream and explore. (2022)

When I was a young activist writer in the Bay Area, I thought I had all the answers. Sometimes I was right, and a lot of times I was just plain ignorant and wrong. There were a few positive things that came from my impatience, energy and anger: I dared to do things with my artistic comrades that hadn’t been done before. We came together in writing collectives to make books because most writers of color were not being published at the time. We didn’t know how to publish, but we learned how to do it guerrilla-style. We organized readings, performances and concerts, made posters and came out to support each other big-time. We brought the noise. And got it done. It all boils down to that old cliche: believe in yourself. Trust in your creative vision and the power of your distinct writer’s voice. (2022)

I don't write with "lessons" in mind. I just hope my readers are absorbed by the story, that they enjoy the read, and that the novel raises some provocative questions. (The Women's Review of Books, March 2004)

By saying that all my characters have a little bit of me in them, I mean that I try to be invested and empathetic in all my characters—whether they are principal or secondary, deeply flawed and not very “nice.” If you’re in tune with your story then the characters do come at you organically. There isn’t an order to how they might appear.

(Is it important for Filipinx/Filpinx American storytellers to focus on Philippine culture and history in their work?) No. You should feel free to write whatever you want to write. We don’t make art to represent. That has to happen organically. Filipinos are not a monolith. Humans aren’t a monolith. We all have different experiences and need to write across the different identities we hold. As artists, we should be free to write about a wide range of complicated characters and subjects. Don’t limit yourself to only what you know. But definitely do your homework! Being a writer is hard work. (2022)

A lot of novels about the Philippines or set in the Philippines don't cut it at all because they don't capture the crazy quilt atmosphere and the hybrid ambiance that occurs twenty-four hours a day. Things happening all the time, and noise and crowds and beautiful animals and amazing flora. At the same time, pollution and urbanization and sophistication and, you know, the jungle. How do you do all that? You can't tell it in a traditional way because the language dies. And also the music of the language itself, the music of the streets. How do convey that chaos? So, once I decided to go with it as I found it, I relaxed because at the risk of alienating some readers, this was the way the novel had to be presented.

What I try to share with younger artists, not just writers, is you have to not be afraid. You have to try it. It’s our job. And do your homework while you’re at it. But don’t squash your imagination. I mean, my imagination is all I have. I mean, it’s unique to me, unique to you, unique to my students. They have their own, and they have to learn to trust it. (2019)

I have been definitely influenced more by Latin American writers than by any other type of writer. They are very close in terms of voice their humor, their fatalism, their... well, that overused term "magical realism." It's a wonderful term that's just been used so much we don't know what it means anymore. But the way they can use language and visions and surrealism without being corny, and the humor that's always there, is very close to a Filipino sensibility. More so than-now this is a completely personal perception-other writers from Southeast Asia.

I always had dreamed of writing a novel set in the Philippines—what I knew of it. I struggled for years while I was writing poetry, thinking, one day I’m going to write this book. But in what voice? I read Malaysian writers and Chinese writers and Indian writers until I stumbled upon the Latin American writers and I realized that that was it: the humor, the fatalism, the passion and irony (1991)

Philippine literature—just like the Philippines itself—is complicated, and can’t be easily described or pinned down. Over 7000 islands make up the Philippines, and over a hundred languages and dialects are spoken!...(What common elements and themes do you see in Philippine writing? And what do you see in the pieces here?) JH: Yearning, and melancholy. Mordant humor, a certain kind of fatalism, love of the macabre and supernatural. A love of puns and a sense of irony. A reckoning with history and the colonial past. (2019)