Dreaming the Nation

Abstract

Most, if not all Filipino critics based in the Philippines, will approach a text by a Filipino American not just with disguised hesitancy but with suspicion as well. The explanation for this attitude ranges from the critics' issues with the subject-position of Filipino-American writers to intended audience. This paper argues that works of Filipino-Americans and Filipinos based in the United States could be read more meaningfully given the chance and must not be reduced to a simple evaluation such as this. It asserts that because of their subject-position and penchant for examining notions of identity and roots, Filipinos in the US bring in diverse perspectives to the study of imaginations of nation in literature. For example, novels like Jessica Hagedorn's Dream Jungle could be read as disruptions of colonial and imperial narratives. Among the other questions this paper raises about the novel are: What imagining of the Philippines does the narrative have? How does it constantly negotiate its imagining of the nation and the multifarious issues imbricated in nationness? Is it possible that in the spaces of this novel's problematic negotiations lays possibilities of interrupting the seemingly seamless discourse of the nation?