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 Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction and The Gangster of Love.