Danger and Beauty

Hagedorn muses about love and sex, and probes with wry humor and sharp social satire the heart—and hearbreaks—of the immigrant experience.

"Jessica Hagedorn is one of the best of a new generation of writers who are making American language new and who in the process are creating a new American Literature."—Russell Banks

"[Hagedorn] sees her native land from both near and far, with ambivalent love, the only kind of love worth writing about."—John Updike

Jessica Hagedorn is a performance artist, poet, playwright, and formerly a commentator on NPR. Her novel, Dogeaters, won an American Book Award. Other books include the groundbreaking Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction and The Gangster of Love.