Prairie Lotus

Prairie Lotus by Linda Sue Park

The racist and derogatory nature of the Little House on the Prairie books has been criticized by authors, parents, and scholars since 1993 (Reese). Even so, people continue to read these books. I know I was read Little House in the Big Woods and Little House on the Prairie as a child, and the New Orleans Public Library, where I work, still has 16 actively circulating copies of Little House on the Prairie alone, with most of those 16 copies having circulated since 2019 and many of them checked out now, in 2021. While the determination to continue reading these racist, colonialist, outdated books surely derives from a combination of racism, complacency, white supremacy, and white nostalgia, it’s also possible that some parents don’t remember the damaging quality of these books from their own childhood, and don’t know that there are far better options out there.

Prairie Lotus is one of those exceptionally better options. The author’s note with which the book concludes transparently affirms that Prairie Lotus is a response to the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, which Linda Sue Park avidly read and loved when she was a young Korean-American girl growing up in the Midwest, before coming to realize that she never would have been accepted in the world she was so fond of reading about. Facing this experience head on, in Prairie Lotus Park writes the story of Hanna Edmunds, a half-Chinese, half-White girl (who also has some Korean ancestry) arriving in the Dakota territories with her White father (“Papa”) after leaving the West Coast. Papa and Hanna’s departure from the West Coast is one awash in pain in grief. After anti-Chinese rioting and the lynching of 20 Chinese men in Los Angeles, Hanna’s mother falls ill and eventually dies, leaving both Hanna and her father grieving and traumatized.

The novel begins with Hanna forming a connection with a group of Sioux women and children on the prairie, where the group eat together and exchange gifts. When Papa responds to Hanna’s telling him about this interaction coldly, it is revealed early on that while Papa may have loved Hanna’s mother, he does not have a true understanding of racism, dispossession, or colonization. He sees the land as his (and, by extension, all white settlers’) to work and claim as their own, and is patriarchal and controlling—even when she’s suffered terrible racism, exclusion, teasing, aggression, and, ultimately, assault from White settlers in the town of La Forge, where Hanna and Papa end up settling, Hanna is careful to frame these experiences to Papa just so, or to hide them all together to avoid his constantly flaring rage from being directed at her.

Prairie Lotus spins an engrossing story of moving to a new place, of life on the US American prairie lands in the 1880s in a White-settled town, of a multiracial experience in a deeply racist environment. It is a story of going to school, of following dreams, of deep grief. It’s a story of connecting with heritage and believing in one’s own worth despite tenacious efforts to dehumanize and exclude. It’s a story of navigating profound differences with family, friends, and community members. It’s a story of questioning what’s right, and being able to see oneself as complicit in injustice even as one suffers injustice oneself: Hanna has the maturity and wisdom to understand that even though she faces racist abuse and fear everyday, this doesn’t mean she’s any less complicit in dispossessing Indigenous people of their land. The way Hanna questions the law and reflects deeply on her choices—and is able to see that choices she made arose from privilege, even if she is very rarely in a privileged position—felt simultaneously revelatory and completely accessible for a middle grade audience.

This is an excellent book, both deeply painful and strongly empowering, and one that I sincerely hope serves as a harbinger of a new generation of books that tell more critical, sensitive, human stories about U.S.American history. There is a way to tell engaging, vibrant stories about history and push back against white supremacy, glorification of colonization, and racism. With Prairie Lotus, Linda Sue Park adds to this new canon.

A Wish in the Dark

A Wish in the Dark by Christina Soontorvat

Born in prison, Pong feels sure he’s destined to remain marginalized and oppressed forever. Life is hard enough in Chattana for former inmates who were legally released, much less for Poing, who escaped from Namwon Prison, leaving his best friend behind and taking with him a persistent guilt and the chilling memory of his one encounter with The Governor—an admired but dictatorial man who tells Pong “Those who are born in darkness always return.”

A Wish in the Dark is a confident, well-made tale, written by an author skilled enough to take the plot over “many years passed” ellipses without slackening the momentum whatsoever. Set in a lightly fantastical world inspired by her Thai heritage, Soontorvat also manages to construct a convincing magical reality without spending undo time hashing out little details. The important thing here is the heart, as Pong is taken in first by Father Cham, an elderly monk with the power to bestow wishes that always come true, and then Ampai, a revolutionary leader who organizes the poor and working class against the Governor. Pong finds purpose, connection, community, and belief in his own ability to create change.

Unfortunately, these resoundingly powerful messages get a little lost in the book’s dogged focus on light and dark imagery. This is the light and dark of illumination/fire and absence of illumination/fire, rather than the light and dark of skin tone, but a dichotomy is still constructed where light is complicatedly but generally good (associated at various points with power, goodness, access to resources, skill, and sense of purpose, though also with the law, wealth and classist oppression, and surveillance) and darkness is complicatedly but generally bad (associated with impoverishment, aloneness, moral failing, oppression, and vulnerability). I found the persistent focus on light and dark a false path in this novel, as well as an unfortunate symbolic re-entrenchment of a damaging and overused “dichotomy,” because this book is actually far more about community versus isolation and empowerment versus disempowerment. Though they are undeniably present in a story that is about a dictator who restricts access to light, heat, and energy, light and darkness have little to nothing to do with the deep themes of this novel, and the focus on light and darkness as symbolic themes is unsatisfying and stereotypical.

This is an engrossing book about imprisonment, freedom, friendship, community, power structures, oppression, and the possibility of revolution, featuring a strongly-imagined fantasy world grounded in Thai culture. The characters are appealing and fully realized. Through reading against the grain, the truer and more important themes of A Wish in the Dark can be drawn out from a heavy-handed overuse of the damaging focus on the light/dark “dichotomy,” but I still look forward to future books where such a binary is not entertained as a useful narrative move.

Elatsoe

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger

When Ellie’s cousin Trevor dies unexpectedly in a car crash, Ellie is one of the first people to know—even though she’s hundreds of miles away. Ellie, who is Lipan Apache and descended from the great Elatsoe, Ellie’s namesake, has the power to communicate with and even raise ghosts, just like her mother, her mother’s mother, and on and on through her family line. But when Trevor’s departing ghost communicates with her, it is to impart a chilling message: his death was no accident, but murder.

Swiftly, the mystery deepens and contorts. Working together with her mother and her best friend, Jay, Ellie journeys to the town where Trevor died, and finds an eerie place where New England green grass sprouts in the arid Texan desert, and eyes seem to follow them everywhere. The world that Ellie inhabits is one where various forms of magic exist. There are “cursed ones,” or vampires. There are those who, like Ellie, can communicate with ghosts. There are fairy folk and wizards. There are animal people, like Coyote, who have mostly secreted themselves away in hiding as the changing world has grown more and more threatening. Even in this alternate universe, where magic ripples and Ellie’s ghost dog Kirby can accompany her everywhere, some elements of reality remain chillingly consistent with our own: Indigenous land has been stolen and appropriated; Indigenous history and spirituality are denied or overlooked, and White people are quick to save or enrich themselves at the expense of others.

Elatsoe is a thrilling, chilling, enthralling read. Rich with elements of fantasy and horror alike, it also feels refreshingly grounded, with realistic friendships and relationships, moving passages about grief, family, and the interconnectivity of all life on earth, and an adept combination of magic and modern technology. I loved this book for its focus on friendship, storytelling, and the suppressed truths of US American history, as well as for absolutely keeping me on the edge of my seat and introducing me to the wise, funny, and powerful character of Elatsoe.