In its Fall 1985 issue, ZYZZYVA published a piece by Jessica Hagedorn, taken from her novel-in-progress at the time. According to her bio in that issue, Hagedorn, who was born and raised in the Philippines, had lived in San Francisco for 14 years “before banishing herself to New York City.” (She’s now the Parsons Family University Professor of Creative Writing at Long Island University in Brooklyn, and her latest novel, Toxicology, was published in April.)
The story, about a DJ and prostitute named Joey Sands who works in a Manila disco, is a frank look at a predatory world, one revealing the tangled relationship between the Philippines and the United States. The novel-in-progress would be published five years later as Dogeaters, which would received critical praise from the likes of Robert Stone and would go on to become a finalist for the National Book Award in 1990.
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