A piece of Filipino American history will come to life when “The Passion of El Hulk Hogancito,” a live, semi-autobiographical multimedia literary performance, is presented at Cal State San Bernardino on Thursday, Oct. 20.
Jason Magabo Perez, an assistant professor of fiction writing at CSUSB, wrote the piece and will perform it beginning at 6 p.m. in the university’s John M. Pfau Library, room PL-4005, with special musical guest Shammy Dee.
The event is part of Filipino American History Month, and is being presented by the CSUSB Department of English, the Pacific Review literary magazine and Lubos P.A.S.O., the Filipino American student group on campus.
Admission to the performance is free; parking at the university is $6.
Blending autobiography, fiction, dramatic monologue, documentary film and other visual illustrations, Perez tells the story of Hasón, a supposedly fictional narrator who wrestles with authorship and obsession, shows up to the “Third Grade Show & Tell Showdown,” muses on the mentorship of WWF wrestling heroes, investigates the root of his crybabyness, and explores the trauma of the FBI's 1970s racist, sexist, and shady criminalization of two Filipina migrant nurses, one of whom happens to be Hasón's mother.
Part monologue, part pop culture lecture, part performative historiography and all intimate storytelling, “The Passion of El Hulk Hogancito” is based on Perez’s own life. His mother is Leonora M. Perez, who, with fellow Filipino nurse Filipina Narciso, was wrongly accused 40 years ago in the deaths of several patients at the Ann Arbor, Mich., Veterans Administration Hospital. Though convicted at trial, they were later acquitted on appeal and freed amid charges of racism, sexism, and fabricated evidence directed at FBI investigators.
The case remains unsolved, and the FBI has never apologized to Perez and Narciso.
On his website, Perez wrote, “It has become my life’s work to explore, examine, and make sense of this very personal, very public, very traumatic history.”
“The Passion of El Hulk Hogancito,” written in 2009, was the first of his projects, followed by “You Will Gonna Go Crazy” in 2011, and “Leonora, archive of” in 2013.
“A staged reading of Perez’ new pop-cultural lecture, autobiographical play, and metahistory, ‘The Passion of El Hulk Hogancito,’ is his first step toward publicly telling his tale,” Hiya Swanhuyser wrote in the SF Weekly in March 2009. “As horrifying, deeply American, kinda maybe David Lynch-meets-hip-hop narratives go, this one is a doozy.”
In addition to his teaching duties, Perez is a performance artist and writer. His writing has also appeared or is forthcoming in Witness, TAYO, Eleven Eleven, Mission at Tenth, Vitriol, and The Feminist Wire. Formerly a featured artist at the New Americans Museum, Perez has performed at several college and university campuses across the U.S., and at venues such as National Asian American Theater Festival, the International Conference of the Philippines, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the Asian Art Museum SF, and the La Jolla Playhouse.
Perez received an M.F.A. in Writing and Consciousness from New College of California, is an alumnus of the Voices of Our Nation Writing Workshops for Writers of Color, and most recently completed a dual Ph.D. in ethnic studies and communication at the University of California, San Diego, where he also earned a B.A. in political science.
Visit Perez’s website for more information about his work.
For information about the Oct. 20 event, contact J. Chad Sweeney, professor of English, at chadsw@csusb.edu.
For more information on Cal State San Bernardino, contact the university’s Office of Strategic Communication at (909) 537-5007 and visit news.csusb.edu.