Word: filipino
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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From the Philippines to the United States. From San Francisco to New York City. From the '70s to the '80s, from jazz to rock, from lumpia (a Filipino dish) to peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, from Tagalog (a language native to the Philippines) to English, from assimilation blues to a graceful homecoming. Jessica Hagedorn's new novel, The Gangster of Love, is a book about transition, movement, emigration, immigration and repatriation. Though the title could hardly be sillier or more ungainly--it sounds like an afterhours movie on Cinemax--the book itself is written with wit and style and ultimately...
Hagedorn tells the story of the Riveras, a Filipino family that moves to the United States in 1970. While the father of the clan, Francisco, stays behind in the Philippines with his mistress, the mother, Milagros (a "volatile" woman given to pricey shopping sprees after fights with her husband), travels to America with her emotionally troubled son Voltaire (who has a penchant for bringing home strangers ranging from "a man with a rat's face" to "a burned-out ballerina") and her troublemaking daughter Rocky...
...novel gets some of its energy and power through the contrast and conflict between Rocky's Filipino heritage, personified by her domineering mother, and her adopted American bohemian culture, championed by bandmate-lover Elvis Chang. "My mother once confessed how much sex revolted her," Rocky says, shortly after sleeping with Elvis. "'Romance is what I crave,' she said. 'Sex is for men and animals'...I dreamed about sex, wrote about it, sang about it; I got down and dirty when I talked about it." When Rocky's mother starts up a family business making and delivering Filipino food, Rocky leaves...
...based on the early career of Carole King, who with her husband Gerry Goffin composed some of the best hits -->