Burning Heart: A Portrait of the Philippines

Nothing is absolute, especially in the Philippines. It is a land of opposites, where religion, spirituality, superstition, and mystery are all present in equal doses. It is a place where Catholics consult tarot card readers and prostitutes keep shrines to the Virgin Mary. Burning Heart allows a rare glimpse into this world: the taste of cane liquor and salty stews, the sound of infectious dance music, and the hopelessness of political turmoil and violence.

Photographer Marissa Roth says "I saw the Philippines in terms of light: luminous, reflective, hard, and deeply shadowed. Filtering that light was the constant heat and humidity, a deceptive sensual salve, masking a country scarred by violence and pain." Her unflinching photographs uncover the importance of religion in the Philippines, as well as the social inequality, dire poverty, overpopulation, and ingrained class system that are all part of daily life. The poetry of Jessica Hagedorn reinforces these realities, but also shows that the simple pleasures we all experience as human beings-- dancing, eating, rejoicing, laughing-- are not absent from Philippine life. Together, these images and poetry are a deeply affecting vision of a country and its people.

Marissa Roth is a photographer whose work appears regularly in the New York Times, Time, Newsweek, and other publications. Her photographic study about the children of the Philippines, "The Children Wear Old Eyes," was featured in a solo exhibition at the Lentz Center for Asian Culture at the University of Nebraska.

Born and raised in the Philippines, Jessica Hagedorn is the author of the novels The Gangster of Love and the award-winning Dogeaters; and the editor of Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction. She has adapted Dogeaters for the stage and is working on a new novel.