Prairie Lotus

In a detailed Author’s Note, author Linda Sue Park explains that when she was a young reader, she loved the Little House series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Park recounts how, as a child, she felt that communing with Laura and her experiences was “a kind of road map to becoming American” (248). Despite her love of Laura, the Ingalls, and all the travels and experiences Laura had, Park did not enjoy how “Ma hated Native Americans” as that hatred meant Ma would not allow Laura to be close with “someone who wasn’t white” (250), like Park herself. As she grew older, Park was able to recognize other insensitive and racist instances detailed by Laura in her narratives. Park notes with irony that she daydreamed as a child about being best friends with Laura Ingalls, and writes about Prairie Lotus, “It is an attempt to reconcile my childhood love of the Little House books with my adult knowledge of their painful shortcomings” (256).

Intentionally, LaForge is based on the town of De Smet in Dakota Territory, the setting for the last four of Wilder’s books in the series. Some of Park’s characters are based in part on characters widely known by Wilder fans, such as the Ingalls and Nellie Oleson. With Prairie Lotus, however, Park sought to show a distinct perspective in a similar time and place by giving a voice to Hanna’s conflicts with racism and intolerance. Park discusses briefly how, regarding more modern heightened sensitivities to racism in literature, some feel that Wilder should not be faulted for being “a product of her time,” while others question her ability to see the wrongness and injustice in some portrayals in the Little House books. Park also wonders in her Author’s Note what readers in the future will think of the way literature presents portrayals today.