Author: treefrog

In The Legend of Auntie Po, the character of Auntie Po is an unlikely prophet. In the masculine environment of a Sierra Nevada logging camp post-Chinese exclusion act, Auntie Po’s identity as an elderly Chinese woman contrasts the 1885 stereotypical young white male logger. She also contrasts late-1800s stereotypes of femininity, as her masculine blue pants and red flannel shirt resembles lumberjack clothing, specifically mirroring the image of Paul Bunyan, another mythical figure in the American northwest. Similarly, Prior is an unlikely prophet in Angels in America. As a gay man, his being chosen as a prophet is ironic because of Christianity’s view on homosexuality. Similarly to Mei’s role in her story, Prior’s role in Angels is partially to impart the wisdom he gleans from the Angels onto other characters. All three characters challenge the “norms” of who would stereotypically be chosen in such position of honor by men (loggers) or gods (the Angels) in America.

While Mei is not seen as a God-like figure herself, her role as a storyteller to the children in the logging camp makes her a prophet. From her visions of Auntie Po, she is able to impart the wisdom of the legend onto the children in the logging camp to act as reassurance during difficult times. Both The Legend of Auntie Po and Angels in America have significant characters that doubt the legends, particularly in the face of tragedy. Bee’s lack of faith in Auntie Po becomes clear after the logging accident: “No Mei! I don’t see Auntie Po!…I don’t see pretend Gods!” (197) This is a similarity between the two works, with many characters doubting Prior’s visions of the Angel because of his illness-induced mental state. This doubt ties into the significance of showing unlikely prophets and legends both on stage and in literature. Representation is important, especially in the context of legends which allow children to see themselves in stories told by people they can relate to.

In Act III Scene 4 of Perestroika, Joe expresses opinions rooted in his Mormon beliefs which contradict Louis’ view on America. Not only is this ironic because of the Mormon church’s view of homosexuality as a sin, it also presents warmth than expected toward Joe’s background within the church, specifically because the church’s views seem optimistic when contrasting Louis’ pessimistic, hopeless view of America. On page 202, Joe asks Louis, “Do you know why you find the world so unsatisfying?” and answers this question himself, saying “you never face the sorrow of the world, it’s bitterness,” and continues, “You have to accept that we’re not here to make the entire earth into a heaven, you have to accept we can’t. And accept as rightfully yours the happiness that comes your way” (203). Louis, rightfully, points out that these ideas are distinctly republican and Mormon. However, the most interesting that Kushner does in this scene is create space for these republican, Mormon ideas to contribute toward Joe’s acceptance of his own identity. Louis’ pessimistic view of America, while understandable, may actually be less helpful to self-acceptance than Joe’s ideas rooted in his Mormon upbringing which allow him to accept the imperfections of the world. Ironically, this means that some aspects of Joe’s Mormon beliefs make him more willing to accept his relationship to Louis. Whereas Louis, who relies almost entirely on his own internalized ideas about acceptance, America, and optimism, struggles more to accept his newfound distance from Prior and can hardly fathom that all of Joe’s characteristics as a gay, Mormon, republican can exist at once. Through this scene, Kushner calls into question Louis’ more stereotypical beliefs about what it means to be a queer man to suggest that there is not necessarily one way to come into or express one’s identity. Joe’s identity as a gay man is complex, but his willingness to except that some things do not have inherent explanations, a trait taken directly from his Mormon upbringing, gives him a leg up in understanding his place in the world over Louis’ panicked philosophical uncertainty.

In “Place,” Eli Clare describes his nature-filled childhood in rural Oregon as he reconciles with the contradiction between the way he was raised and his urban, metronormative, reality as a queer adult. Clare’s writing takes a deeply personal tone as he describes his connection to the land he was raised on, which was both immersed nature and at odds with the natural environment through the town’s logging industry. Clare serves as an environmentalist in this section, identifying the ways in which his perspective on what was “good” for the environment shifted as he got older. He separates his “old self,” a child who believed the environmental propaganda taught to him in his hometown, and his “new” self, an activist who questions that propaganda. By interweaving ideological arguments about class, race, and sexuality with vignettes from his childhood, Clare encourages readers to have empathy toward his childhood self and the propaganda-based environmental beliefs common in his hometown.

The relationship between Clare’s sense of nature and his sense of self is complex, which is partially caused by the feeling that he cannot return “home” to the place he was raised. This tension between childhood and adulthood has many causes for Claire, but his queerness and conflict between rurality and queer identity is an undercurrent to this section. Although he misses the connected nature of his childhood environment, he can also identify with the stereotypically urban, visible queerness in his future. Queerness was one of many reasons Clare left the environment of rural Oregon, allowing him to discover new perspectives contrary to the propaganda he was raised within.

Saeed Jones’ “Last Call” describes a narrator’s conflicting desire for a relationship with another man despite internal and societal barriers. Through imagery that emphasizes external darkness, Jones situates queerness with nighttime and smoke, evoking a sense of danger and scandal. In the beginning of the poem, he portrays the “night’s” mouth as a gun, implying a potential for physical harm within their relationship. Despite this perceived risk, the narrator cannot help but be drawn toward the danger when he physically pulls the man back into him, initiating their sexual relationship despite his conflicting feelings. In the middle of the poem, the lines “I’ve got more hunger than my body can hold. Bloated with want” (16) portray the narrator’s desire as intense and consuming, using hunger as a metaphor for sexual desire. The word “bloated” also implies that the narrator has consumed or is asking for too much in their relationship; his desire has reached the point of greed. This imagery positions the queer relationship at the center of the poem in a negative light, an element supported by continued imagery of darkness and drowning in the second half of the poem.

Throughout the poem, Jones hints at the forces preventing the narrator from fulfilling his desires to be with the other man. Societal pressure to conform is implied through the narrator’s need to “wait for the moon to drown” (16), implying that he must wait until all light is gone so that no one can see him before acting on his desire. The narrator’s final act of being pulled down into a lake to be with the other man is both muddy, which symbolizes the emotional sense of being “dirty” for being in a homosexual relationship, and serves as a metaphor for being pulled down to hell, a potential reaction to homosexuality being considered a sin. The poem ends by implying that, despite the portrayal of this relationship as negative from the beginning, there is a “city” beneath the surface of the lake – a sense of hope beneath the surface of the narrator’s hesitance and self-hatred – which he is on his way towards.