Ana Reeder and the cast of LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater’s production of “Queens” by Martyna Majok. (Photo by Erin Baiano)
The following is from Migration Is Not a Metaphor, a series of works and excerpts by immigrant theatremakers that originally appeared in our Summer 2025 issue. Click here to open the original print version in a new full-screen tab.
In Martyna Majok’s play Queens (which premiered as queens at Lincoln Center Theater in 2018, and which is slated for a Manhattan Theatre Club production this fall in a newly rewritten version), two generations of immigrant women pass through the same illegal basement apartment over two decades and debate among themselves how to launch a new life in America. In 2017, a young Ukrainian woman, Inna, shows up looking for the mother who abandoned her years ago, launching the memories of current landlord and former basement resident Renia, who abandoned her own young daughter in Poland. This scene takes place the first week Renia arrived at the basement, in December 2001, after she just received some devastating news from back home in a language her roommates Pelagiya and Aamani don’t understand.
(AAMANI and PELAGIYA sit together, as if in a hospital waiting room. Mugs of coffee. Both women smoke.)
AAMANI
She is in there so long.
(They both turn to look at the door behind which RENIA resides.)
PELAGIYA
That’s why you can’t trust people. They come and tear apart your life.
AAMANI
…
PELAGIYA
It’s true.
AAMANI
Well I am a little tired of living like that.
PELAGIYA
You gotta let go your old life.
AAMANI
I think her problem is she did. And this is where she ends up to be.
PELAGIYA
What’s wrong with here? We have parties.
Soon as you go from your country, you are gone. People back home they get mad, offense, because they think you think you are better than them. Because you come here. And I don’t know if better but you do become different. You say you gonna write, gonna call. They say they gonna call. But you become different. They don’t know what’s happening here, to you, how you live. And, after a while, you almost forget how they do. When you are not there, that it’s exactly what you are. Not there.
AAMANI
Then what do you hold on to then?
PELAGIYA
Nothing. You don’t hold on to nothing. You move. You are here.
AAMANI
I was in love.
I am.
It has been a long time. I am.
That is why I came here. I am in love. And we would have been killed.
I came on a temporary visa to attend a conference. I submit to every conference outside of Afghanistan that I could. Soon as I arrived here, I apply for asylum. Then I was supposed to bring… her.
…
I don’t hear from her long time. I cannot call her because what people suspects. I can’t ask about her. I send letters but I know I should not. I rent apartment with other Afghan people in California. But they—They left Afghanistan, the parts of Afghanistan they do not believe in, but certain ideas about proper ways that certain things should be, those they bring here with them. I don’t feel safe. I don’t feel good. So I move. Chicago. Brooklyn. Everywhere I don’t feel good. Nervous. Paranoia. I did not want to bring danger to her. Or to my family. I was having terrible dreams. I was afraid I would say her name in my sleep. So I find this place. I find you. And this place. Where no one knows me. That is the real reason why I come here.
PELAGIYA
I did not actually believe your other story. About the
husband. When first you come here.
AAMANI
Yes you did.
…
PELAGIYA
What’s her name?
(A fear washes over AAMANI. She has spent so long hiding this.
She shakes her head no.)
AAMANI
Maybe in Canada.
I can maybe apply for asylum there and then I can apply for her. I am too afraid to do anything here right now. It is my curse that language is my skill, my love. Dari language. Math and science are international. Because if I have position here, if I could show what I’m good to do, that I am smart—I keep trying to write and to translate but I work so late and come home so tired, I just smoke instead.
…
(re: RENIA) I saw this woman…crumble to the floor here and—
PELAGIYA
I know.
AAMANI
What do you think happened? Did you understand any of that?
PELAGIYA
The same part you understand. Something at home.
AAMANI
Her family?
PELAGIYA
Something.
Something not good.
(END OF EXCERPT)
Martyna Majok is a playwright from Poland who was awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her Broadway debut play, Cost of Living, which was also nominated for the Tony for Best Play. Other plays include Sanctuary City, Queens, and Ironbound, which have been produced across American and international stages, plus the libretto for Gatsby: An American Myth, with music by Florence Welch and Thomas Bartlett. Additional honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, Steinberg Distinguished Playwright Award, Arthur Miller Foundation Legacy Award, and Obie Award for Playwriting, The Hull-Warriner Award, and NYTW 2050 Fellowship, among numerous other awards. Majok studied at Yale School of Drama, Juilliard, University of Chicago, and Jersey public schools. Majok has developed TV projects for HBO and written feature films for Plan B, Pastel, and MGM/Orion. She is currently adapting Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 for the Broadway stage.