Jessica Hagedorn

Growing up in the Philippines, I loved all kinds of movies. We had a very healthy film industry there when I was a child.

I'm preparing for a multimedia theater piece, Airport Music, that's coming up in New York City.

I don't know what issues concerning identity have helped contemporary fiction evolve to what it is now. All I know is that the range of voices that are being heard and published is a lot more diverse than when I was coming up.

I'm an underdog person, so I align myself with those who seem to be not considered valuable in polite society.

I think for a lot of so-called post-colonial peoples, there's a feeling of not being quite legitimate, of not being pure enough.

Becoming a mother has helped make me a tougher, stronger writer.

I love writing dialogue, and I think a lot of my writing is visual and very cinematic.

Life is not simple, and people can't be boxed into being either heroes or villains.

Hybridity keeps me from being rigid about most things. It has taught me to appreciate the contradictions in the world and in my life. I scavenge from the best.

I have been definitely influenced more by Latin American writers than by any other type of writer. They are very close in terms of voice - their humor, their fatalism, their... well, that over-used term 'magical realism.' It's a wonderful term that's just been used so much, we don't know what it means anymore.

I don't believe in sampling some Tibetan music just to make it sound groovy, but you do your homework, you understand what you're doing with it.

But I think there's a genuine joy, too, a sense that no matter what, even if my stomach's growling, I'm going to dance. That's what I want to leave people with at the end of the play. After all this, people still know how to live.