Description
“The Gangster of Love is elegant and smart, deftly capturing the pain of leaving a country behind and the struggle to adapt to a new one.” —The New York Times Book Review
From celebrated novelist Jessica Hagedorn, an electrifying novel about a Filipino-American family navigating a culture of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll
Rocky Rivera arrives in the U.S. from the Philippines the year that Jimi Hendrix dies. So begins a blazing coming-of-age story suffused with the tensions of immigration that finds Rocky moving from the counterculture of 1960s San Francisco to the extravagant 1980s Manhattan music scene.
The Gangster of Love tells the story of the Rivera family as they make their new life in the States, all the while haunted by the memory of the father and the homeland they left behind. Among its members are Rocky's haughty mother, who has impulsively left her father; Voltaire, her brother, prone to heavy depression and odd friendships with strangers; and Rocky herself, unsure about sex and worshipful of her boyfriend, the guitar-playing Elvis Chang, who must learn to accept reality amidst the myths and lures of American success and idolatry.
About the Author
Jessica Tarahata Hagedornwas born (and raised) in Manila, Philippines in 1949. With her background, a Scots-Irish-French-Filipino mother and a Filipino-Spanish father with one Chinese ancestor, Hagedorn adds a unique perspective to Asian American performance and literature. Her mixed media style often incorporates song, poetry, images, and spoken dialogue.Moving to San Francisco in 1963, Hagedorn received her education at the American Conservatory Theater training program. To further pursue playwriting and music, she moved to New York in 1978.Joseph Papp produced her first play Mango Tango in 1978. Hagedorn's other productions include Tenement Lover, Holy Food, and Teenytown.In 1985, 1986, and 1988, she received Macdowell Colony Fellowships, which helped enable her to write the novel Dogeaters, which illuminates many different aspects of Filipino experience, focusing on the influence of America through radio, television, and movie theaters. She shows the complexities of the love-hate relationship many Filipinos in diaspora feel toward their past. After its publication in 1990, her novel earned a 1990 National Book Award nomination and an American Book Award. In 1998, La Jolla Playhouse produced a stage adaptation.She lives in New York with her husband and two daughters, and continues to be a poet, storyteller, musician, playwright, and multimedia performance artist.
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