Identity and Race in Brenda Wong Aoki’s The Queen Garden

The Queen’s Garden is a play by Brenda Wong Aoki and premiered at the Life on the Water Theater in San Francisco in October 1992, produced by the Climate Theatre. The main character of this play is a narrator who projects her chilhood life when she was growing up on the Westside. The Narrator who is Brenda in present time tells about her past in Westside, her romance with her first love, Kali, her family, her companions, Sherry, Hai, and so on, about her students when she was teaching on Twelve O’ Clock High, and about Aunti Mary, Kali’s mother, who always brought her father roses to buy a drug in her father’s drugstore. This paper will talk about some issues on the play, especially will focus on identity and racial issue.

From the very first narrator’s dialog in this play, we can see how Brenda has mix-up blood in her body, she said:

 “I’m Pake, Buddahead, Chicana, and Haole: Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, and Scots. And I grew up in a neighbourhood surrounded by the 405, the 710, and the L.A. Country Flood control and the Carson oil fields. An island unto itself that we called the Westside.” (P.21)

It makes Brenda look different from the other people who live in Westside. Brenda has oriental look that made Judy decided to ask Brenda to be a friend of Hai, new student in Lit. 1 class who came from Vietnam. Firstly, Brenda didn’t want to be look like Hai who is new commer and she called it as F.O.B. Fresh Off the Boat but later, Hai think about her true identity and her origin. Hai and Brenda lived together above the whore house when Brenda was teaching at Twelve o’Clock High. Brenda fell in symphaty with Hai when Hai told her how she used to do to survive when she moved from Vitnam to Westside. Since then, Brenda questions her self and her surroundings why people murder other people look like them, such as Vietnamese.

The climax of Brenda’s confuseness appears in the scene “Dinner with Father”:

“Brenda: I’m nor gonna ask God to help us murder people. Especially people who look just like us!

...................................................................................................................

Dad: Wait! Stop! Not at this table! We are Americans! Brenda Jean! What kind of example are you setting fo these kids? You’re the onesan. I never seen such a bitter perverse person. You hate everybody! White people! Rich people! Buzzy! Forget the store! Dave’s Pharmacy is dead! I love working at Lucky’s! Mama’s thrilled with her job at the cafetaria! So what happened to you? You used to be so sweet. Now, look at you! You buy everything at the girl? And why are you wasting all that money on rent? You got money to perverting you. I want you to move back home right now.

Brenda: Home? This doesn’t feel like home. Hai’s more family than you are!” (P.36)

That scene shows how everytime Brenda look at her self in the mirror, she agree that she look like oriental women, just like Vietnamese, but her father said she is an American. Her whole family are American. Her mix-up blood can be the cause of her identity confuseness or her identity confuseness can be caused by her life experience that made her more critical about her identity.

Beside identity issue, this play also brings race issue. The race issue appear on “The Riot” scene.

“Narrator: Then these two white guys push me. Knock me to the ground and I hear...

Steven: Wait! Stop! She’s in my Lit. Class.

Narrator: It’s steven Newcomb. He gives me his frat ring.

Steven: Show this to any white people who try and bother you.” (P. 30)

That scene shows how violence caused by race happened on Brenda’s high school. How there were a binary between superior and inferior. How white people, as the superior, do violence to other races, as the inferior, in this play.  The scene when Judy taught her students about Utopian Literature and the way Judy describe Utopia as “a place where people live together in harmony” shows how there are many different tribes and races live the Westside and oppression often happened to them who are inferior. In this case, Westside is only a place that the writer use as a representation of the world. The writer want to deliver the message that violence and oppression to the inferior races still happen in the world.

From above explanations, I can conclude that Brenda Wong Aoki’s The Queen’s Garden try to bring cultural issue, such as race issue in the Westside and also identity issue by how the Narrator projects the character of Brenda and how the character of Brenda being told by the Narrator. 

Works Cited

Aoki, B. W. (1992). The Queen's Garden. Life on the Water Theater, San Francisco.