First published 1996

This is my 4th book for the Classics Club Challenge.

Summary

The year that Jimi Hendrix died, Raquel left the Philippines for San Francisco with her mother, Milagros, and her brother, Voltaire. In her new home, Raquel embraced her artistic side and changed her name to Rocky, while her mother struggled with establishing a new, much less privileged life, and Voltaire struggled with mental illness. 

When Rocky fell in love with a guitarist, Elvis Chang, the two started a band called The Gangster of Love, with Rocky as the lead singer and lyricist. They moved to New York City where they joined the arts scene of the late 70s and 80s. All the while, Rocky tried to figure out who she was and what she wanted from life. 

My Thoughts

This novel is a gritty and raw coming of age story. It’s also a story of immigration, integration and assimilation, and of family and the connections that hold them together in spite of intergenerational conflicts and cultural pressures. 

Hagedorn creates fascinating characters. They have dimensions to them so that even when they weren’t likable, they weren’t cartoon villains.

Rocky’s character was at the center of the story, and it was often told from her point of view. Yet I felt like she was the character that I knew the least by the end of the book. Perhaps that was because she was still trying to discover for herself who she was. 

While her brother wanted desperately to return to the Philippines, Rocky struggled to figure out who she was, where she belonged and what she wanted from life. She sought independence and yet experienced guilt for leaving family behind. She had sexual desires, but didn’t enjoy sex because of the guilt she had internalized about it as a child. 

New York City and its club scene are portrayed in intense and realistic ways. I felt like I was in the clubs and on the streets with the characters. Everything you associate with the rock scene and the 70s in New York City was present – sex, drugs, violence, poverty, crime.

I don’t know whether the style was modern or, perhaps, avante-garde, but it was certainly unique. The narration utilized several points of view, including the omniscient, but the switches seemed to occur with almost intentional randomness. There were several dream sequences, some of which took the format of a play. Poetry was interspersed with prose and several chapters were jokes of only a couple of sentences in length. 

Within the story, time was relative. Occasionally, events were mentioned – like Imelda Marcos’ trial – that could help identify the year, but otherwise there was little to mark the progress of time. Flashbacks seemed to occur more frequently as the book progressed. 

Some Tagalog is used, but infrequently, and it can mostly be understood in context. Google Translate also provides fairly accurate Tagalog to English translations. 

This was a great book, and I appreciated it, but I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it. It was too gritty and too raw for my personal tastes at this moment in time. I do think it my younger self would have both appreciated and enjoyed it, and I would encourage others to read it if none of the content or trigger warnings are problematic for you. 

Content/Trigger Warnings

Abortion

Addiction

AIDS

Alcohol consumption

Body shaming

Domestic Violence

Drug consumption – multiple kinds

Mental illness

Misogyny

Pregnancy loss

Racism

Sexual assault

Violence

About the Author

Jessica Hagedorn is an award winning author, playwright, poet, and editor. She was born and raised in the Philippines before moving to the United States as a teenager. To learn more about her, be sure to check out her website.