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. Here in one volume are this exciting writer's first two books, Dangerous Music and Pet Food & Tropical Apparitions , along with a generous selection of her work that reveals a powerful and writty continuation of her journey as a singer and searcher, woman and questioner. "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 "Ms. Hagedorn is deliciously wicked . . . " —Caryn James, New York Times 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 An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction and The Gangster of Love.

Hagedorn muses about love and sex, and probes with wry humor and sharp social satire the heart-and hearbreaks-of the immigrant experience. Here in one volume are this exciting writer's first two books, Dangerous Music and Pet Food & Tropical Apparitions , along with a generous selection of her work that reveals a powerful and writty continuation of her journey as a singer and searcher, woman and questioner. "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 "Ms. Hagedorn is deliciously wicked . . . " —Caryn James, New York Times 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 An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction and The Gangster of Love.