A Reading & Conversation with Jessica Hagedorn

A Reading & Conversation with Jessica Hagedorn

By Robert Diaz

In her Toronto debut, award-winning Filipino American author Jessica Hagedorn will reflect on how the city, especially Manila, has influenced her artistry and craft. She will read from her past writing, as well as engage in conversation with Lucy Mae San Pablo Burns, Associate Professor of Asian American Studies at UCLA.

Jessica Hagedorn was born and raised in the Philippines and came to the United States in her early teens. Her novels include Toxicology, Dream Jungle, The Gangster Of Love, and Dogeaters, winner of the American Book Award and a finalist for the National Book Award. Hagedorn is also the author of Danger And Beauty, a collection of poetry and prose, and the editor of three anthologies: Manila Noir, Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction and Charlie Chan Is Dead 2: At Home In The World. Honors and prizes include a Gerbode, Hewlett Foundations’ Playwriting Award, a Philippine National Book Award, a Lucille Lortel Playwrights’ Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fiction Fellowship, a Kesselring Prize Honorable Mention for Dogeaters, an NEA-TCG Playwriting Residency Fellowship, as well as fellowships from the Sundance Playwrights’ Lab and the Sundance Screenwriters’ Lab. For more information, see: http://www.jessicahagedorn.net/

Lucy Mae San Pablo Burns is Associate Professor at UCLA’s Asian American Studies Department. She is the author of Puro Arte: On the Filipino Performing Body, published by NYU Press. She is working on her second monograph, Impersonating Humans, Personating Robots, a book concerned with the drama that the figure of the robot raises, beyond the simple naturalization of robots as vibrant matters with whom humans have social relations. Other writings include Fictions of Dictatorship, a project exploring fiction as a method to attenuate the persistence of state violences, foregrounding the tense and tender relations between power and justice.

This event is part of “Beauty, Brutality, and the Neocolonial City”, a set of gatherings that will be held at the University of Toronto on March 22-23, 2019. These gatherings bring together international scholars and critics to explore the complexity, dynamism, and significance of Manila within and beyond Asia. As a city that has experienced the multiple vestiges of empire, the disciplinary machinations of dictatorial rule, the effects an infamous “war on drugs”, and the continued realities of uneven resource distribution, Manila serves as a productive physical and ideological space to explore the dialogic nature of beauty and brutality—as these concepts intertwine in the urban repertoires of the global south.

For more information and to register for these events, visit: ttps://munkschool.utoronto.ca/event/26620/

CO-SPONSORS

New College Initiatives Fund. Women and Gender Studies Institute. David Chu program in Asia-Pacific Studies. School of Cities. Centre for Southeast Asian Studies.

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Robert Diaz is Assistant Professor, Women and Gender Studies Institute, University of Toronto

(Source: Eventbrite.com)