Blaise Zerega: Hello everyone, and welcome to Alta Journal‘s California Book Club. It’s a thrill to be here tonight for Jessica Hagedorn and The Gangster of Love. We’re going to have a special guest, Sean San Jose and our host John Freeman. My name is Blaise Zerega, I’m Alta Journal‘s editorial director, and I’m Zooming in tonight from San Francisco where the fog, it’s just rolling in. You can’t keep Karl away. I encourage everyone to please say “hello” in the chat and say where they’re Zooming in from. While you do that, I’m going to do a little housekeeping.
Tonight’s event is part of the Alta‘s California Book Club. It’s our free monthly gathering featuring books that reflect the wonderful diversity and humanity of life in the Golden State. In the weeks leading up to each club meeting, altaonline.com publishes numerous articles, essays, interviews, and excerpts about the month’s pick. And if you haven’t had a chance to read them, please go look for essays by: Ishmael Reed; CBC editor, Anita Felicelli; our host, John Freeman; and several others. And a fun fact, every CBC episode that we’ve ever done can be viewed on our website as well.
All the articles are included in California Book Club’s weekly newsletter, which is also free. We have numerous newsletters, and we encourage you to please sign up for them. Trust me, they’re all great. Find one you like, and of course, stick with the CBC.
This weekend we’re going to be at Los Angeles — this is our special issue, titled Los Angeles Storytellers — but we’re going to be at the LA Times Festival of Books at the USC campus on Saturday and Sunday. That’s Booth #111, so please stop by and say hello. The following weekend on Saturday, April 27th, we’ll be at Pages: A Bookstore in Manhattan Beach. Lots of fun activities planned, so please stop by, say hello, introduce yourselves. You’ll get an email following this event with details.
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And that’s probably it. There’s lots of good things in store, so I’m going to stop talking and turn this over, please, to the host of tonight’s California Book Club, John Freeman.
John Freeman: Thanks Blaise. Hi everyone from Tasmania, to Buffalo, to San Francisco, and everywhere in between, including Hong Kong. I’m calling to you from New York City, which is where our tale begins tonight in an odd way. Last night I was in Brooklyn for the launch of Paul Yamazaki’s first book, Reading The Room. Which is a story about being a bookseller and putting together the amazing books on the shelves of City Lights, his own life. And in the course of the Q&A, I asked a question of Paul, because I wanted to know what the relationships were like, as a bookseller, to writers who came to the store and became not just readers but writers by going there.
And I cited Jessica Hagedorn, who immediately turned around in the front row and waved and said, “Hey, wait a second, I’m here.” Which felt like a very apt beginning to this event in the sense that everywhere I turned in the last 30 years of my artistic life, as a reader and as a person who cares about poetry and performance, whenever you go into a gallery space, it seems like Jessica Hagedorn has been there and changed it, altered it for the better.
She grew up in Manila and moved to San Francisco when she was 14 in the 1960s. And was brought to City Lights by none other than Kenneth Rexroth, who came across her work because she had a poem which was given to a friend, which was passed to him when he was a columnist at the San Francisco Examiner. And he decided, when he called the family, to maybe bring her to City Lights and other poetry readings, with his own daughter. What an extraordinary beginning of a writer’s life.
But my God, what she has done with that entry. As you know, Jessica Hagedorn is a novelist and author of four brilliant books from Dogeaters, which takes place in Manila between the early 1950s and the 1980s, the Marcos years. Which proceeds with a kind of tale of two families, narrated by parallel narrators. One, a Catholic school girl, the other kind of hustler who’s also a DJ. Came across a few of those in our lifetimes I think, some of us have. Brilliant book that shows what you can do with just ingesting all the sounds, and songs, and politics, and myths, and history of a place.
The book we’re talking about tonight, Gangster of Love is her follow up. It’s her second book. It opens in San Francisco in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Raquel Rocky Rivera and her family have come to San Francisco after the marriage of her parents have fallen apart. She’s there with her brother Voltaire, and her mother Milagros. She is also a good Catholic school girl, but she wants to get out and wants to go and meet people. And thus begins this amazing picaresque novel, which bounces between San Francisco and New York, about her life and her coming into her own as a woman, as a rock musician, as a poet. And of course, she starts a band called The Gangster of Love.
Jessica Hagedorn also was in a band, but it was called the West Coast Gangster Choir, which performed in New York and San Francisco. And one of the things that was so great about Jessica Hagedorn, and popping up, is that it seems like her life has been a study in collaboration. As you know if you read the website here, in the 1960s and 1970s, she was an active performer and poet on the poetry scene. And together with Thulani Davis and Ntozake Shange formed what was called then the Satin Sisters. They read poetry, wrote plays together. When Ntozake Shange’s first book came out and was a play, it was Jessica Hagedorn who performed in it. And it was just the beginning of five decades of life working with other poets, writers, actors, musicians. And what’s so brilliant about the book we’re going to talk about tonight is it’s a story in which all those things are in flux, as a woman is becoming a woman, as she’s falling into friendships and love.
Tonight we’re going to be joined by Sean San Jose, who’s the artistic director of the Magic Theater. And perhaps even we’ll get a special performance, because he’s not only an artistic director, he’s an actor and performer himself. So I could talk forever about all the things that she’s done, but please join me in welcoming Jessica Hagedorn.
Jessica Hagedorn: Hello.
Freeman: Hello again. Nice to see you on a screen, or in person, or both.
Hagedorn: Yeah, it’s great to see all these people saying hello from all parts of the world. I’m sort of riveted. It’s great.
Freeman: I know it is, and I don’t know what time it is in Tasmania, but I think that person deserves a cup of coffee at the very least.
Hagedorn: Or a drink, a stiff drink. Please.
Freeman: Let’s start at the very beginning. I know The Gangster of Love is semi-autobiographical, but it’s also a novel. And one of the things that’s so great about, it’s so fun reading it again, it’s just that you put us there, you bring us back to San Francisco in the ’60s, ’70s: New York in the mid-70s. And you describe what it was like to be out at night, to be going to clubs, to be trying to make a band, to be trying to write poetry. But obviously this begins with Rocky’s family arriving in San Francisco. They don’t want to be with their family in Daly City. Can you tell me a little bit about your own arrival in the city at the time, what it felt like? And what it felt like to just look out the window of the apartment that you were living in, or house?
Hagedorn: It was as if my mind was blown from the moment I stepped off that ship. It’s not like I was in a canoe or anything, but it was this passenger ship. And we were taking a lot of stuff with us, which is why we didn’t fly. It was good. The transition took days, almost 20 days to arrive, and I think it helped to go slow because it was shocking. The cold was shocking, the fog was shocking. The city, I just didn’t know where to look. And the fact that we were being moved around because my mother was taking her time finding the right place, what we could afford, and all that. And we were just shell-shocked. And also shell-shocked by what had happened to our world, the lost world. It was very complicated and messy. Yeah.
Freeman: Mm.
Hagedorn: But the city felt alive to me, and I just couldn’t help but sort of try and soak it all in even though I was upset.
Freeman: What high school did you go to?
Hagedorn: Lowell. But before that I went to a Catholic school, girls school, for two years, and it was called St. Vincent’s at the time. I loved those nuns. They were like worker nuns. And they were quite kind and compassionate, and sort of let me find my way. And I made two very good friends, who are still my friends. And then I switched to Lowell because I heard it had a great drama class, and all these things. Yeah, so that’s where I ended up.
Freeman: I’ve already kind of stepped on your story a little bit about Kenneth Rexroth in part because you’ve told that story a lot. I don’t want to make you retell it, but I’m a little bit curious about what the poems you were writing at the time were like. You’ve been writing poems for a long time, and obviously from the language in this book, which is rich and musical, and has all sorts of sonics, you’re a poet at heart. But what were your poems like when you were a teenager, when you were Rocky’s age?
Hagedorn: Cringy. I mean I think they were your typical, “Woe is me.” And I was reading a lot because I had no friends and not very much family in the Bay Area then. So I haunted a lot of bookstores. This is before Kenneth brought me to… We were living near the panhandle on Bell Street. My mother found this flat that was roomy and cheap, and there were a lot of secondhand bookstores around there. And I would just take long walks and sort of get to know the city, and wander into the bookstores. I just loved it.
I’ve always known I wanted to be a writer, even when I was a little child, so the idea that there were these books in bins for 25 cents. So I would just buy stuff. I’d have a little money my mom would give me and then something would attract my attention, the cover perhaps, or I had heard about some beatnik writer, so it was a little bit taboo and delicious, and I’d buy it. So take it home and devour it, and then copy it. Copy. You know that’s how you learn how to write? I think stealing from the greats or the not-so-greats.
Freeman: And you were going at quite a young age to some of the coffee shops and to poetry readings.
Hagedorn: Because of Kenneth. I didn’t even know they were poetry readings. So he took us, that evening when he took me to City Lights with his daughter who’d been there before, she was quite sophisticated. And we went to a coffee house. I think it was the Blue Unicorn because that was near where we lived, me and my mother. And Kenneth was on Scott Street, so he was in the neighborhood. It was really kind of wonderful. And I said, “Well, what are they doing?” And he said, “This is a reading dear. They’re just standing there reading.” And I thought, “Oh, what an odd practice.” So yeah, I got turned on to the whole thing.
Freeman: I’m asking you this in part because you have such a distinctive voice, not just the voice on the page, but your voice as a performer, your voice as an actor, your voice speaking right now. You were a columnist for a while, and as I mentioned, you were part of the Satin Sisters, which we’ll get to in a moment, but how did you develop your voice? You clearly had an inner voice that wanted to come out and wanted to speak, and you were writing it, but when did it become an outer voice? When did you feel okay saying, “Okay, I’m going to stand up and I’m going to read this poem.”? Or, “I’m going to stand up and I’m going to deliver this monologue.”?
Hagedorn: I think in the early ’70s when I had gotten a little more experience and sort of fell in with this great nomadic tribe of poets, who were much older than me and who shared a lot of things with me, and were very generous about asking me to read with them. So you learn, just trial by fire. And it was very performative, in that San Francisco way. So I would watch them do it, do their thing in front of… And the audience would respond, and then if they didn’t like you, you knew it. So I had to get up there with them and learn.
And then I’ve always loved the theater, so I ended up going to ACT in their program, when they had a program, the conservatory, and learned a little bit more about performing from people who were very good at it. So it gave me some chops I guess, but I just learned by really imitation and feeling it, I think. Trying it out.
Freeman: One of the lovely melodies of this book is Rocky’s friendship with, attraction towards, being repulsed by Keiko, her friend. She’s sort of is a performer in her own way, of her own life-
Hagedorn: Yeah.
Freeman: … and she’s bold in the way that Rocky isn’t bold at first.
Hagedorn: Right.
Freeman: And I’m curious if you could talk a little bit about their friendship as one of the sort of molten cores of this book, and just the way it revolves around kinship, love and performance, to some degree.
Hagedorn: I think I was very fortunate that those moments in the ’70s were so rich and dynamic, and there was so much going on in the Bay Area that was creative, that was dangerous, that was gorgeous, that was very exciting. And I think there was a generosity about your audience too. You know the other night I rewatched the Cockettes documentary, and it made me almost cry, because there’s this point in the documentary where a few of them come to New York and they flop, because the New York audience just thought they were so amateur, and so silly, and all this. And it was a moment that I have been through, coming to New York and sort of going through that trial. Very different culture here. I live here now everybody, so I’m really a sucker for punishment.
No, but San Francisco nurtured me, and I think those artists who were way ahead of me became people, like the Keiko is a composite of several amazing women I knew, who goaded me, and taught me, and encouraged me, and sort of said, “You just got to do it.” And I am always finding people like that even to this day. So they’re my muses. And I think my mother’s my first muse. I mean, she was a very flamboyant woman who was also a visual artist, but frustrated because she was not raised to take that seriously, so she had a lot of angst about it. And if not for her. And she encouraged the things I did. I mean, she also was like, “Ugh, what are you doing?” So a lot of the women in my life have been Keiko-ish. Yeah, in varying degrees.
Freeman: Well, do you think you could read from some of the… I think the section that you have picked out involves Keiko. And I think you and Sean San Jose are going to read it together. So maybe Sean, you can turn on your camera and turn on your sound.
Hagedorn: Come on Prince.
Sean San Jose: I’m ready.
Hagedorn: “Keiko invited Voltaire and me to a drag spectacle in North Beach. Everyone had to go in costume. I went as Anna May Wong in Daughter of the Dragon. My face powdered chalk white, my lips the color of dry blood. Keiko wore her Cleopatra Jones afro wig, completely naked under a chainmail, micro mini gladiator dress. Voltaire went as, who else? Jimmy Hendrix. The black diva Sylvester made a sensational entrance in a Joan Crawford evening gown, carrying a picnic basket and flinging cotton balls at the audience. He crooned Summertime in his lush Nina Simone voice. High above us, a naked, young, white boy as pretty as a fawn swung languidly on a trapeze entwined with artificial flowers.
I started dressing like Keiko, haunting the big Salvation Army outlet on Army Street. Bought slinky crepe dresses with ratty shoulder pads from the ’30s and ’40s, beaded pillbox hats with net veils, satin elbow-length gloves, moth-eaten velvet capes. I sprinkled patchouli oil on a disintegrating $10 squirrel coat, which I proudly wore all winter. My skin broke out in a rash. My mother was upset by my transformation. My brother tickled. ‘I’d fumigate that coat if I were you,’ my mother said. She offered to give me her old gowns, at least they’ve been dry-cleaned, which I gamely tried on. They were opulent and wonderful, but all wrong for me. ‘Ma, I don’t have your Coca-Cola body.’
She gave me the silent, suffering, martyr treatment for days after that, frowning whenever Keiko’s name came up. I was truly perplexed. ‘Would you speak up and tell me what’s eating you? Don’t you like her?’ She responded with her usual, ‘You never listen to your mother.’ She was right of course. My mother’s power was diminished, and Manila with all its taboos and obligations seemed a million miles away.
Keiko was much too fascinating. Her friendship made me feel powerful. I loved running away to her studio apartment, which I did as often as I could, staying with her when Elvis Chang was on the road, or at an all-night recording session. I told myself that if Elvis and I ever split up, I wanted a place of my own just like hers, except mine would have a typewriter, a piano, and a thousand more records and books. I wanted a queen-size mattress set in the middle of the floor just like hers, strewn with mirrored pillows and covered with a paisley fabric from India. The kind you could still buy on Haight Street. The bed was the center of Keiko’s decadent universe. The first thing you noticed when you entered the room.
When I told Elvis about Keiko, he was silent. ‘Don’t you want to meet her? She’s an artist.'”
San Jose: “‘Everybody in San Francisco is an artist.'”
Hagedorn: Thank you, Prince.
Freeman: Thank you, Sean.
Hagedorn: More later, don’t worry.
Freeman: Yeah, more later on that. It does feel like the kind of internal thought that echoes, everyone as they’re watching, people become in that flamboyant way. And looking around in libraries to think about what to talk about tonight, I came across a couple of documents, films, and actually a very brilliant master’s thesis about you and Ntozake Shange, by someone named Jewel Pereyra. And in it she was basically trying to write about transnational alliances that you forged in the ’70s, in that period. But she also was relying on this concept of felt architecture, which comes out of Shange’s work. As in, by writing in your work scenes of intimate interaction between other women, you were creating sort of spaces for the kinds of interactions that you needed to create a feminist possibility.
And this is a long-winded way to begin into… I wondered if you could talk a little bit more about the ’70s. If only because, and it’s becoming less so, but broadly, the ’70s were often looked at as a depressing decade, as a decade of stagflation and decline, cities being broke. And yet when you read this book, and when I hear you talk about the ’70s, it feels like a period of possibility that comes out of claiming what no one wants. Salvation Army clothes, finding friends who are on the margins, and becoming fellow travelers. And I wonder if you could talk just a little bit more about that as a foundation for friendship, the way that…
Hagedorn: Yeah, I think the ’70s definitely, it was not all roses and we know this, but I think in the same way in New York, when I came in the late ’70s and decided to relocate to New York, it had a familiarity. The ruin and the bankrupt nature of the city, the seediness, is also a time when everybody can become creative, and angry, and inspired, and well, there’s a lot of innovation during those kinds of turbulent moments in the world. And I do believe that, because I think I’ve lived enough to witness it over and over again. Where there’s all this… Well, the times we’re in now, which are quite ghastly, horrific actually, and there’s no end to it. I hope the artists out there are, and they are, they’re making work.
And certainly we couldn’t afford the real estate either. I mean, it was cheap comparatively, definitely, but not to us, not when you don’t have a job or your job is part-time. I always had these weird part-time jobs. And you just have to live with a lot of people, that you love, and make it work. And that is also fun when you’re young. So you’re always discussing collaborations and having people over. And a little bit of what Paul Yamazaki was reminiscing about yesterday, when he was talking about our encounter. He dropped by with someone I knew and then became this lifelong friend. Because you’re looking for another family all the time, and artistic family becomes very important.
Freeman: I love how in this book, there’s this kind of dance between the biological family. For Rocky, her mother, who’s this big flamboyant, dominant figure who has men waiting on her hand and foot. But yet also is very vulnerable herself because she’s been left by her husband, which is a sore point, to put it mildly, for both Rocky and her. And there’s Rocky’s brother Voltaire, who’s at the beginnings of a mental illness and he’s struggling a lot. And so she flees into the arms, to some degree, of a chosen family, which is not just Keiko, but Elvis Chang her boyfriend. And she follows Keiko to New York City.
And I feel like a different novel, maybe written by a different person, she would’ve followed Elvis. But in a Jessica Hagedorn novel, she follows her girlfriend, which is kind of wonderful. And she turns up in New York. It’s in the mid-1970s. And as I mentioned at the introduction, you also had a band, it wasn’t called The Gangster of Love, it was called the West Coast Gangster Choir. And if you Google it, you can find some performances. I recommend everyone do that.
Hagedorn: Nah.
Freeman: They’re wonderful. But one of the ones I really loved was from the Poetry Center in October 1975. Someone named Nashira-
Hagedorn: Oh, yeah.
Freeman: … introduces, and she says something I just want to quote briefly because it’s so about what you just said, as in these times. And she says, “We understand the word, gangster, in a positive way. We understood the word, gangster, to be the underdog. Jessica has always hated Eliot Ness. She’s also always understood ‘gangster’ in a satirical way with the irony of the blues.” And then at the end of her introduction, she says, “Good God, America is a gangster country.” And then you all come on and play.
And I thought, “You could say this right now.” And I wonder when you were making music at the time, what some of your influences were? And also how much you were pointing to America, the country, and what it was up to, in a broad way?
Hagedorn: Well, there were so many people doing what I was trying to do, who were very good at it. I was influenced by… Well, I had their records, and then if they ever came to San Francisco, I would go hear them perform. So people like The Last Poets, and Gil Scott-Heron, and Nikki Giovanni were doing the poetry and the music, or the rhythm section thing. But I always loved funk, and I love also jazz, very much. So the experimental stuff, and Miles Davis doing the funk, dark stuff, was really to me speaking to the times, the mood we were all in, which was very spiky and electric. And you kind of were watching all these wars going on. I mean, one of the songs I wrote was called Beirut, and it referenced Arafat, and we made it rhyme. So, you know-
Freeman: What did you rhyme Arafat with?
Hagedorn: … This and that. Yeah, Arafat, this and that. I know, I know. But it was like you were writing all the time, and some of it was okay, and some of it hit the mark, and some was a big flop. But the point was you were always stimulated by everything going on around you. Good, bad, ugly. And I think that the music certainly was very rich at the time. Well, it’s always rich. What am I saying? But I was very into it, going out to hear everything. And that little performance at San Francisco State, where we all looked like we’re 12. And I was frozen, just standing there, because it was our very first time, but I wanted to do it. I remember the host, Lewis MacAdams, who was a great poet himself, the late Lewis, wonderful poet and performer. I said, “Do you mind if I bring the band?” And he was so open to it and found extra money to pay them. And then I got scared. I said, “Why did I do that? I could have just done a reading.” And I was so petrified.
But I’m really happy because last night, Paul Yamazaki, we’re going to keep invoking him, he told me that’s where he first… He was in the audience. And Makoto, my guitar player at that moment, was his friend. Makoto Horiuchi. I hope you’re here Makoto, tonight. He lives in San Francisco. And I said, “You were there?” And he said, “Yes. And that’s why I wanted to come to your house and hang out with all of you.” Because he saw a connection. He made a connection. And I didn’t know him at all. He was not yet at City Lights. We were all kids. Yeah. So I mean, I don’t know. Have I answered your question?
Freeman: Absolutely. No. I think setting the stage for how friendships also, we’re keep coming back to relationships and friendships, and in some ways The Gangster of Love is a novel perhaps without plot, but it’s driven by friendship. Friendship is the narrative momentum. Friendship with family, including Rocky’s Uncle Marlon, who we’ll get to much later on, her other friends that she meets in New York City who help her along.
But I want to bring back your friend, Sean San Jose, who’s the artistic director of the Magic Theater. Because he could speak a little bit more and ask you some questions to how you work, and how friendship, or any other thing, is part of your life and process.
Hagedorn: Great.
Freeman: Sean.
San Jose: Great, thanks John. And for everybody watching and listening, John Freeman gave one of the best and most thorough introductions to Jessica Hagedorn, her body of work that covers so many different facets. It was really cool to hear. Hi, Jess.
Hagedorn: Hey.
San Jose: So do you want to read or do you want to rap?
Hagedorn: A little of both.
San Jose: Okay. You want to rap first?
Hagedorn: Yeah, maybe. I was thinking we could share something about the experience of adapting The Gangster of Love for the stage, because you were in the cast, and we’d done work together for Campo Santo, your wonderful theater company, and the whole process of adaptation. Because I remember you used to invite writers, you know, like Junot Díaz and people like that, to come and… What? You would adapt one of their stories or something? You yourself would be the playwright adapting their work to the stage, making it theatrical. I never got to see those pieces because I didn’t live in San Francisco when you were doing that. But there’s a lot of adaptation going on, and I think that magic of what you can do with material like The Gangster of Love, that’s already a book, and then we go back and we work on it. It becomes different.
San Jose: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I actually, I don’t know if you remember, Jessica, I traveled to New York to see Jessica Hagedorn’s adaptation, her own adaptation of her own amazing novel Dogeaters. Dogeaters at that time was at the public theater in New York. And so that was an adaptation on top of an adaptation, meaning, anyone listening, watching, Dogeaters in some ways as a reader, as a Filipino, is an adaptation of our cultural existence, in a lot of ways. So I’ve always felt like you’re the closest thing to the collage that is our lives as flips, as fobs. But it transcends all that. And therefore, reading something like The Gangster of Love, which is… And I grew up in San Francisco, so that again, was this other grafting of, or adaptation of, not a moment in time of a city, but the vibe of a place, the spirit of a city, and who are the real denizens, in a lot of ways, of the city.
And so I think that energy is what is exciting for someone like me that works in live performance, that you see when you’re reading it. Not only do you see the world that you come from, or that your lola has talked about, or that music has attuned you to, but you start to see it all come alive. And like any good book, you just want more of it, so you want it to live. But your stuff actually does live. There’s so much lively dialogue. The characters are so clear and so unique. It is really amazing. You and I actually, when we met after that, we did… I think I may have preceded everybody, and I think maybe that day in a sushi spot in the East Village, I proposed to Jessica Hagedorn that we do The Gangster of Love. But that could just be bad memory and big ego talking. But we did a couple plays together after that.
And what’s cool, if anyone has interest in Jessica’s writing also as a playwright, is they are in and of it itself, in the same way that her novels are, they morph. They live in multiple spaces at once. So it’s not even a play adaptation per se, it’s a living thing. It’s a piece of literature. It’s poetry come alive. It’s a document of rhythm. It’s really cool. And so we got to do a couple plays together, and then you and I got to be part of the cool cast, when our whole crew came in here at the Magic Theater in the previous regime under Loretta Greco, and you did an adaptation for them. That was exciting to do a play. It’s always exciting to do a play about our city, in our city. And the city, for all of you listening or watching in the 212, the city is San Francisco. Just so you know. So when I say, “The city”, I mean San Francisco. Everything else you can have, but we are the city.
Hagedorn: Tasmania. Yay. You know what I love about adaptation? I don’t know how much time we have for this conversation part. And then we can maybe do our cut about kid, thing. But what I really love about adaptations of page-to-stage things, is you have a chance to revisit your novel, or the short story that you love, and expand upon it. All those things that you would’ve loved to add to the book, but you think about it later. You know, you have more time and you go, “Oh my God, I could have a whole scene with Uncle Marlon. Maybe I can’t have Isabel in it and that we can’t go to LA and do that. But we’ll do something else. He’ll visit San Francisco. I can do that.”
And the same thing happened with Dogeaters. It was like I created characters that didn’t even exist in the book, but they became very important to the play, and yet I still felt like it was true to those books. So you can explore and make things better and give it another touch up, and it’s deep and complicated, and create a bigger mess. And it’s kind of wonderful. You know?
San Jose: Yeah. And what you’re talking about too is that when it’s a big imagination like yours, you can work in both directions. Meaning the adaptation isn’t merely a collapsing of a novel, or sort of pulling out of certain things. I remember talking to the late, great Denis Johnson, who as we all know is the legend novelist, amongst many other things, and our group, Campo Santo, got to work with him. And I asked him, I was like, “Why plays and why now?” And he said, “You know, I spend all this time when I write a novel, and if I write one sentence in one day I’ll feel great.” And he says, “And then when we do the plays, the characters just talk to me and I write what they talk.”
And so it seems more simplified in a certain way, but working with you, it works back and forth just like all your novels do. It isn’t merely dialogue, and then it also can become living literature. Which for performance people is really thrilling, to be able to… Deep, heavy, dense, rhythmic, multilingual text on stage is really… I mean, that’s what our cities really are, so that’s really cool.
Hagedorn: Yeah. Well, I’ll never forget, you gave me the okay to watch the rehearsal of Denis Johnson’s play about J. Edgar Hoover, and it was so sick, and wonderful, and epic. And I just sat there because he is really one of the deepest writers. I loved. And I think that was a great loss when he went. But-
San Jose: It sure was.
Hagedorn: … the fact that we shared so many of the similar kind of passions about the plays and the books, and, you know, “We are going to write it this way.” I just loved it. Anyway, I think is there time to do our little song and dance here? About this very wonderful person who is no longer with us, but it was a very important activist and poet in San Francisco, Al Robles. And I created this character called Carabao Kid, in The Gangster of Love. And Sean also played this character. He did two dual, big roles in my play version of this novel, and we wanted to sort of share a little bit. So John Freeman, is it okay if we do it now? Where are you?
Freeman: That’s perfect.
Hagedorn: Is it a good time?
Freeman: Yeah, no, I think this is from another 150 pages on into the novel, when Rocky has moved to New York, is doing an insane amount of Coke.
Hagedorn: What? She is?
Freeman: No, she’s not. But actually I think by this point, she’s had a baby, right?
Hagedorn: I can’t remember. I know this is a memory thing. She’s going back in her mind and remembering 1973, and how she meets this wonderful poet who becomes her other mentor. There’s Rexroth and then there’s Al.
Freeman: That’s right. Yeah.
Hagedorn: Yeah.
Freeman: Take it away.
Hagedorn: Take it way. Okay, let me find…
San Jose: All right. You good?
Hagedorn: Mm-hmm.
San Jose: All right.
“Amado Reyes is the name on his birth certificate, but he’s simply known as Kid, aka the Carabao Kid. Some consider him the unofficial spiritual leader of a fast-growing, chaotic and exuberant Pinoy Arts Movement in San Francisco. The movement’s emblem is a water buffalo, or carabao. Art and politics are of course inextricably intertwined. The Carabao Kid is asked to read his haikus at street fairs, beauty contests, cultural fundraisers, civil rights demonstrations, rallies against the Vietnam War. I mean, you do what you got to do.”
Hagedorn: “He gently chides me for once describing myself as Filipino.”
San Jose: “Don’t say, ‘fili,’ sister, say, ‘pili’. In Tagalog, pili means to choose. Pino means fine. Filipino equals fine choice.'”
Hagedorn: “I am impressed by his logic at first. Then I say, ‘But filipino and pilipino’s not so different. Part of it’s still a Spanish word.’ Carabao Kid’s heavy eyelids flutter. He seems taken aback.”
San Jose: “‘Hah?'”
Hagedorn: “Mm. He even grunts pilipino.”
San Jose: “‘Hah?'”
Hagedorn: “Instead of, huh? ‘Pino,’ I repeat, ‘Isn’t that simply a twist on the Spanish word pino?'”
San Jose: “‘Ugh.’ The Carabao kid is annoyed and amused. ‘So what you saying, sister? The Spaniard’s actually meant to call us Filifino’s?'”
Hagedorn: “Now I’m confused. It’s like all the other collisions with language that occur and reoccur in my life, amusing and occasionally illuminating, but oftentimes going nowhere. But maybe nowhere is okay too. We start giggling. Ligaya covering her mouth shyly. Everyone else cracking up at the absurdity of our conversation. Voltaire, Manong Joey, his clients Frankie Matubang and Dr. Arsenio, ‘I’m sure we are related’, Rivera. These young Pinoy’s sometimes float in to pay their respects and ogle Ligaya. They’re Voltaire’s age and do volunteer work at the I-Hotel for Manong, across street. The Carabao Kid calls them, ‘My zany disciples.’
The volunteers transform Manong Joey’s humble barbershop into a major cultural hangout on Saturday afternoons, bringing food, beer and rum. Manong Joey turns up the radio. The Kid tells jokes. The atmosphere tingles with pent-up energy and nervous laughter. The kid and his disciples believe that in the long run, everything could be reduced to a joke. Maybe that was the point all along and Filipinos knew it. Jokes were in our blood and very zen of us. 400 years of colonization and Catholicism couldn’t erase it from our consciousness. Pahala na, ha ha ha. The Carabao Kid was right. Even back then he could see I was ambitious, trapped in my media-saturated, wayward American skins.”
San Jose: “‘Your band will happen if it happens. You think because you’re female you have to outfox all of us. Everything in its own time. Don’t force it or it will out force you. Why rush huh? Recite your poems. There’s music in that too.'”
Hagedorn: Thank you, Sean. Thank you Carabao Kid.
Freeman: It’s so fun to hear you two read together.
Hagedorn: We like doing it.
Freeman: Yeah, and it’s nice to hear Denis Johnson’s name spoken. He was just such a-
Hagedorn: Oh, we love him. We love him. That’s another shared thing, you know. I knew I could trust Sean because he was loving exactly who I was loving, and for the right reasons. And then he ends up working with Denis too. That’s so wonderful.
Freeman: I loved hearing you talk about adaptation. There’s some questions from the audience I want to get to really quickly-
Hagedorn: Yeah.
Freeman: … since we’re running short on time. But someone named Lisa Vitali writes, “How has your writing changed over the years, and how has it remained the same? And what’s your writing process like?”
I think one thing that’s especially interesting is I’m quite curious, how do you write a collage? Because The Gangster of Love and Dogeaters are collaged forms, in ways that Toxicology maybe isn’t. And yet it feels like it all belongs together. It feels like it flows together. It feels like it has a melody. So anything you can tell us about how you make-
Hagedorn: Just wait until I’m done with my memoir, ha, ha, in 500 years. It’s going to be a giant collage. Well, you know that collage thing, I think Toxicology‘s a collage. I love the form because I can’t help myself. That’s how I think. And I think in juxtapositions, and sort of how interesting it is to have a monologue out of nowhere follow two chapters that are quite traditional, narratives, third person, whatever.
I don’t think I’ve changed that much. I think I’ve maybe changed in terms of being more critical about my own writing. And critical in a good way. And I find it actually a positive thing to really ask myself, “Is this what I mean to say? Is this really what I want to say in this moment?” And to be precise, much more aware of it, the precision of it, and not as loosey goosey as I was when I was young. Because I was just in love with words. So any kind of thing I’d throw in there because, “Oh yeah, let me say, ‘Lush’, for the 55th time.” You know what I mean? You’re just loving it. You’re just in love with language and you’re not being as selective and therefore less effective maybe. I don’t know. That’s how I feel I’ve changed. I think it’s an old lady thing and it’s a good thing.
Freeman: You’re not an old lady.
Hagedorn: Well.
Freeman: Look at that hair. I know I should have known when I asked that question to Paul, looking at you from behind, that that was your hair.
Hagedorn: That was the funniest show ever.
Freeman: If I knew you better I would’ve known.
Someone named Cassidy Green asks the question, “There’s only a couple of chapters that are spoken from a man’s point of view, even though there is a Q&A with Jimi Hendrix, among others. Was that a deliberate decision? And why?”
Hagedorn: I don’t think about it in the beginning. I just go for it and then I follow my gut on that. As I’m writing it comes to me that it’s time for Elvis to speak, or Jimi. And in my other novels the same thing happens, where it feels really right that we’ve had enough of so-and-so and let’s hear from… And I love those points of view, being opposing or giving you another angle on what’s going on. The contradictions are interesting to me. Contradictions have always been interesting. Arguments are fun. Because there’s never just one way of looking at things.
Freeman: I love the arguments in this book, in particular that heartbreaking scene with Elvis and his parents, when they go the restaurant and Rocky arrives late and is groping him under the table. And he’s-
Hagedorn: Steve, if we had another hour I’d have Sean read that, just by himself. He could just do it cold. But yeah, I had a lot of fun. It’s good to get in another space, another head. You know?
Freeman: Mm-hmm.
Hagedorn: I think for me, I find it really exhilarating to write in a voice that’s very different from mine.
Freeman: One of the only novelists I can think of that breaks through as quickly and with as much freedom as you, is Toni Morrison. And I think of her novel, Tar Baby–
Hagedorn: Oh, yes.
Freeman: … which is the most theatrical, and it’s from almost around the same period. At one point she even goes up into a tree and looks down on the action. It’s a very Creolized novel with its language and the characters. And if you read Sula right now, if you read the Tar Baby, both of those novels make these dramatic interior shifts into the points of view of characters. And it’s not sort of, “Here are three characters, here are three points of view.” It says at some point, “All right, someone’s going to come forward and speak to you.” And you pay attention because the language is good enough.
Hagedorn: Yeah.
Freeman: And I want to ask you a question from the audience that kind of touches on this. This is from Aya Nakamura, and they ask, “What is a difference between spoken words and written words?” What’s the key difference for you?
Hagedorn: Not much. I mean, I think they could be on the same plane. I don’t know. I don’t know how to answer that question. I don’t differentiate. I mean, if I want to do an entire novel… And maybe I need to ask, “What is spoken word?” I mean, I’m being playful. I’m saying we used to call it performance poetry, or music, or rap. Sean, you work with so many spoken word artists. What do you think the terminology, what’s the nuance there, the fine line? But my answer would be the same. I think you could do a whole novel in that voice.
San Jose: Yeah, I mean, I think what you’re saying obviously is true, it’s your voice. But I also think that for us readers of your work, that’s what also makes it so thrilling, is the written word sounds like the spoken word. It’s alive.
Hagedorn: Thank you. But I want to honor the question if that’s helping answer it. I don’t see a difference. For me, I love the way people speak and I love rhythm. And that’s why it was so thrilling to see those poets of the ’70s turning ordinary speech into incredible poetry that you could dance to. So I feel like a novel can do that too.
Freeman: Sean, you must have a particular affinity for writers who do that. I think Denis Johnson, Junot Diaz, Jessica, one thing they share is the words on the page feel like the way that people speak, with all its music and complexity, and sort of love and sweat. And I’m just fascinated by the fact that you have worked with those three writers.
San Jose: Yeah, I mean, I’m lucky in our group, at Campo Santo at the Magic Theater we work with a lot of writers that aren’t held down by genre. But I think those three in particular, what you’re saying, I totally agree with you, John, 1000. All of those notes that they hit. But they they reveal our humanity, our interior sort of battle to find our humanity, in a way that on the page can be very one-on-one and contained, but when you’re forced to share it in front of an audience, it can be transformative. And so it’s really compelling and you hear it in your head and in your heart when you’re reading it. But then to have someone actually voice it, literally voice it, is amazing.
Hagedorn: And yes, and I love hearing the performers transform what I write, and show me something else. It’s gorgeous. I highly recommend it everyone. Truly.
Freeman: Someone in the audience, this is just a comment, “One spoken word interaction Jessica did was with a youth poetry slam, and it was weaving and opening the whole audience. It was amazing. It was almost like a music jam session to me. The words took flight.”
Hagedorn: When was this?
Freeman: Yeah, Marie Brickner, if you’re still here-
Hagedorn: Oh, Marie.
Freeman: … you could tell us what event it was. Someone else also tells me there’s nothing wrong with being an old lady.
Hagedorn: I love being an old lady. No, no. Yeah.
Freeman: You’re absolutely right. Joan from Petaluma writes to say, “Listening to this makes me want to go back and grab that ’70s energy and wake it up now. I lived on Waller and Ashbury in the ’70s.” And that’s Joan from Petaluma.
Marie has added, “I can’t remember where this was, but-“
Hagedorn: Yerba Buena. Aah. You were there, Maria? Maria’s family, we’ve reclaimed each other. And I remember that gig. I think Sean was in the audience. I did it with Linda Tillery or something. Linda Tillery. Oh my God. She’s like one of the treasures of the Bay Area, John. She’s like one of the great singers and drummers. And we went to high school together at Lowell. She was like a semester ahead of me, but everybody was like, “Oh, Linda.” And she did the gig with me at Yerba Buena, and there were all these young people there. It was kind of a great, wonderful, fun thing. Thank you, Marie. I think that’s what you’re talking about.
San Jose: And just to support our public school system, Lowell High School in San Francisco is a public high school and one of the highest achieving high schools for years. But it’s also where nerds go. Like Jessica.
Hagedorn: Nerds and musicians. Yeah. But they’re having problems now. I get all their emails. Yeah.
Freeman: Mm.
Hagedorn: Mm.
Freeman: Well, I’ve got one final question from the audience, and then I might have a request. And the question is in two brief parts by, it comes from Amanda, and she writes, “Have you ever had fears of not being, quote, ‘Asian’ enough in your writing or not doing right by your ancestors? And if so, how did you overcome those fears?” And she writes in parentheses, (Asking this as a second generation Chinese/ Hispanic writer.)
Hagedorn: Ooh, you got a lot to mine there. No, I’ve never… No, that’s not true. I’m lying. I mean, I question myself sometimes because I think people put things on me that I’m kind of representing. Especially when Dogeaters first came out, which was a very controversial title, got me in a lot of trouble with the communities. And I just tried to own it as much as I could. And they hadn’t even read the book, they just looked at the title. But it was there to provoke, so I had to own that.
But the thing about representing, no, you are who you are. I’m not going to apologize for anything. I am who I am. Every Filipino mixed up mutt person is complicated and has their own thing, and their own way of dealing with family. Marie knows this. We come from this huge whacked out family. Okay? And they are rich, complicated people. I don’t mean they’re rich, they’re just hard to explain. And they may not be your typical… What is a typical anything? So don’t worry about it, just write who you are and it’ll be fine. Do it well. Stand by your gut, damn it. Yeah, it pains me to hear the fear. It’s so hard to be an artist if you’re afraid like that. So you have to just really get through it.
Freeman: My gut is telling me I still want to ask for one more reading. It’s such a treat to have you here, to have you both here. And I feel like it’s one way to end the night because this novel goes from San Francisco to New York. And then things, if anyone hasn’t finished it, I don’t want to give away some aspects of the family life, but let’s just say that there is a return to the Philippines-
Hagedorn: Yes.
Freeman: … and Rocky’s father, who was offstage for most of the book, comes into the book. And around this time that this is happening, you yourself, not Rocky, wrote a poem called Song of My Father. I think that’s the title, right?
Hagedorn: For my Father. Yeah.
Freeman:Song for my Father, that I think appeared in Dangerous Music, which came out in 1975.
Hagedorn: And is now known as, you can get it at City Lights… It’s so sweet. I said to them, “Just keep it in print. I don’t care.” Danger & Beauty. Because I had to search.
San Jose: Show the book cover. It’s so beautiful.
Hagedorn: Oh, thank you. It’s by Phan Linh, this artist. And it’s really the Virgin Mary with lipstick. Mm.
San Jose: Very Hagedorn.
Hagedorn: Are you going to chime in or what, Sean? On the poem? Or just…
San Jose: It’s up to you. You’re the boss. You’re the boss.
Hagedorn: We’re going out on this. So wherever you… Don’t even look at me. You know, don’t wait for me. I don’t know. We’ll just play. Okay?
San Jose: Okay.
Hagedorn: Okay. Song for my Father. And thank you John for suggesting this.
Freeman: You’re welcome.
Hagedorn: “I arrive in the unbearable heat, the sun’s stillness, stretching across the land’s silence. People staring out from airport cages. Thousands of miles later and I have not yet understood my obsession to return. And 12 years is fast inside my brain exploding like tears. I could show you, but you already know. You greet me and I see it is you. You all the time. Pulling me back towards the space.”
San Jose: “Pulling me back towards this space. Letters are the memory I carry with me, the unspoken name.”
Hagedorn: “Of you, my father. In New York, they asked me if I’m Puerto Rican. And do I live in Queens? I listen to pop stations, chant to Yamaja, convinced I’m really Brazilian, and you, a riverboat gambler shooting dice in Macau during the war. Roaches fly around us like bats in twilight. And Barry White grunts in fashionable discotheques, setting the pace for gorillas to grind.”
San Jose: “The President’s wife has a fondness for concert pianists, and gossip is integral to conversation. If you eat enough papaya…”
Hagedorn: “Your sex drive diminishes. Lorenza paints my nails blue, and we giggle at the dinner table.”
San Jose: “Aunts and whores, brothers and homosexuals, a contessa with Chinese eyes, and an uncle cranky with loneliness.”
Hagedorn: “He carries an American passport like me.”
San Jose: “And here we are.”
Hagedorn: “Cathedrals in our thighs.”
San Jose: “Banana trees for breasts.”
Hagedorn: “History, all mixed up.”
San Jose: “Saxophones in our voices.”
Hagedorn: “When we scream.”
San Jose: “The love of rhythms.”
Hagedorn: “Inherent when we dance. They can Latin here and shoot-“
San Jose: “And shoot you for the wrong glance.”
Hagedorn: “For the wrong glance. Eyes that kill. Eyes that kill. Dope dealers are executed in public, and senators go mad in prison camps. The nightclubs burn with indifference. Curfew draws near. Soldiers lurk in Jeeps of dawn war zones, as the president’s daughter boogies nostalgically under the gaze of 16 smooth bodyguards. And decay is forever, even in the rage of humorless revolutionaries.”
San Jose: “In hotel lobbies, we drink rum, testing each other’s wit. Snakes sometimes crawl in our beds. But what can you do in the heat? The laziness makes you love so easily.”
Hagedorn: “You smile, like Buddha from Madrid, urging me to swim with you. The water is clear with corpses of dragonflies and mosquitoes. I’m writing different poems now. My dreams have become reptilian and green.”
San Jose: “Everything green. Green and hot.”
Hagedorn: “Eyes that kill. Eyes that kill.”
San Jose: “Women slither in and out of our room doors.”
Hagedorn: “Slither in and out. Their tongues massage the terror from your nightmares.”
San Jose: “The lizard’s hissing nervously.”
Hagedorn: “Nervously, as he watches you breathe.”
San Jose: “As he watches you breathe.”
Hagedorn: “I am trapped by overripe mangoes.”
San Jose: “I’m trapped by the beautiful sadness of women.”
Hagedorn: “Women.”
San Jose: “I’m trapped-“
Hagedorn: “Trapped by priests.”
San Jose: … “by priests and nuns.
Hagedorn: “Whispering my name in confession…”
San Jose: “In confession boxes. I’m trapped.”
Hagedorn: “Antiques, the music of the future. And leaving you again and again for America the loneliest of countries.”
San Jose: “My words have changed.”
Hagedorn: “Sometimes I even forget English.” Thank you so much.
San Jose: You’re the greatest. Jessica,
Hagedorn: You’re the greatest. Sean, you’re the greatest John. You’re the greatest Alta Journal. You’re the greatest everyone. And thank you. Now what? Where’s the party.
Freeman: That was amazing. The fact that you can also time that, and do that, and read that together across the Zoom is just a testament to the simpatico feelings between you.
I just want to say if you love that poem, you should probably go back and read Dogeaters, if you haven’t read it. Jessica, I’m going to show you something that’s going to blow your mind.
Hagedorn: Oh my God.
Freeman: Signed to me.
Hagedorn: Housing Works. Yes.
Freeman: 24 years ago.
Hagedorn: That’s how I met you. You were running a reading panel thing there and the wonderful bookshop. And can I say that the poem you asked me to read, Song for my Father, it was the blueprint for Dogeaters. It took me writing that poem. That was the trip that changed my life, when I went back in ’74 to Manila after this long absence. And then it just hit me all this stuff. And it’s so interesting. Who’s in power now? Huh? The same 16 bodyguards. Goons. So he’s back in power and history repeats itself. So everybody be safe or don’t be safe.
Freeman: Or just be nice to each other.
Hagedorn: Be nice to each other. And don’t be afraid to write.
Freeman: Jessica Hagedorn.
Hagedorn: Thank you.
Freeman: Sean. This was a really wonderful conversation. I think Beth will come back on now and let you know where you can download this later if you came in late. Or no, it’s Blaise. Blaise will come back.
Zerega: Yeah, sorry, to disappoint. We have a cocktail, we’re calling it a booktail, called the Gangster of Love, that we commissioned for this month for the reading. So if you’re into tequila, and pineapples, and heavy cream, go to altaonline.com and look up the recipe and toast to Jessica. If you haven’t bought the book yet, please do support our partners, support our writers. And just thank you so much, Jessica. Thank you to Sean. Thank you to John.
Hagedorn: And thank you to the beautiful audience, right?
Zerega: Yeah. Thank you for everyone for coming. And tonight’s program will be recorded and posted on our site later tonight, or first thing in the morning. So share it with your friends. Tell everyone what they missed. Make them feel jealous. Invite them though.
Hagedorn: Yes.
Zerega: And thanks to everyone for coming in from everywhere. From New Mexico, New York, Tasmania.
Hagedorn: Hong Kong. I love saying that. Hong Kong. Tasmania.
Zerega: And please come back next month because we’re going to do a very special event with Gary Snyder. We’re going to do two books, Riprap, and The Practice of the Wild. We’re going to have several special guests as well. So far, it’s Robert Haas, Brenda Hillman, Jane Hirshfield, Kim Shuck, Rick Bass. Several others.
And next weekend please, again, another place to buy the book, at the LA Times Book Festival. Tons of great independent bookstores. Alta will be there, booth #111. We’re going to have a lot of author signings as well. Please stop by, say hello.
And please, of course, don’t forget, if you’re interested in Alta, learning more, visit altaonline.com, consider subscribing the All Access level. It gets you our award-winning quarterly, and each issue has a whole section devoted to the California Book Club. Special offers too. Get your hat, get the Bookstore Guide. This is essential if you love bookstores. Please check it out. And if that’s not right, then of course the $3 a month All Access Digital Pass is there as well.
So again, thank you everyone for tuning in tonight. Thanks again to Jessica and Sean and John. So great to see everyone. And I’m going to sign off, and please stick around for a one-minute survey that’s about to pop up. So again, thanks all and see you next month.•
