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 While the determination to continue reading these racist, colonialist, outdated books surely derives from a combination of racism, complacency, white supremacy, and white nostalgia, it’s also possible that some parents don’t remember the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.