BFE: Julia Cho’s Vision of an Unhomely Home for Asian Americans

Abstract

In BFE, Julia Cho presents the issues of location, body, and identity to offer a vision of an unhomely home for the Asian American characters who feel socially and physically dislocated in America. Being rejected by the white Americans and living with a dysfunctional family at a small town in the American Southwest where there are not many Asians, Panny, a fourteen-year old freshman of a high school, feels that she belongs to nowhere. B.F.E., meaning middle of nowhere, is the term she uses to describe the place where she lives, and it may be applied to describe the emotional state and social life of the Asian American characters in the play. This paper explores the nature of the three Korean American characters’ struggle to belong to American society and find their place in America to discuss their diasporic identity as Asian Americans and the idea of unhomely home. Isabel and Panny think their Asian appearance make it complicated for them to be Americans and have plastic surgeries to erase their Asian features. Panny is kidnapped but actually left abandoned by the kidnapper because she is an Asian. Her relationship with a Korean pen pal, Hae-Yoon, is meaningful in that Panny shares her abduction experience with her and realizes her Asian American identity. The idea of unhomely home is discussed in conjunction with agoraphobic Isabel who stays home to make her home unhomely. After failing their relationships, respectively, Cho’s Asian American characters choose to stay together at their unhomely home.