Customer Reviews

WHITE LOTUS

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I first read White Lotus by John Hersey when it was published in 1965, when the civil rights movement was a very hot topic, and I was just 17, an age when social (in)justice seems to be the only thing worth fighting for. At the time, I thought it was a truly excellent book. So I decided to read it again, here in my old age, just to see if my youthful evaluation would hold up.

First off, I'm not really sure in what category this book should be placed. It's nominally an alternate history story where China(?!) won WWI (? - it's only referred to once as the 'Great War', and other internal evidence places the start of the story somewhere in the early '20's). But in many of its aspects, I think it might be better to treat this one as an allegory, in the vein of Orwell's Animal Farm. In any case, the story traces the life of a young American girl who, along with all the rest of her village, is forcibly kidnapped by a version of the 'Mob' and sold into slavery in mainland China - the pre-Communist version of China, which in the '20s had seen very little of technological progress, a society that had changed very little in the prior 1500 years. Upon reaching China, the story follows White Lotus (her Chinese name) as she is transferred to various owners, starting with a near-upper class mandarin, to a 'mid' level plantation owner, to a poor cotton farmer, to 'freedom' as she escapes to a province that has outlawed slavery, but finds herself just as desperately bound by her limited job opportunities, to life in a 'free' white community where the 'yellows' still own all the land so her only choice is to work as no-hope share-cropper, to industrialized life in the big city, where job choices for whites are still very limited, and finally as a civil rights agitator/activist. With each change of locale, White Lotus becomes attached to a local strong man (Nose, Peace, Dolphin, Rock), each of whom is the personification of a possible 'answer' to life as a slave/dis-enfranchised minority (become totally worthless, give the owner no value for his slave; stage an armed revolt; run to 'freedom', try to build a life based on self-respect and inner fortitude), each possible answer is demolished by the events as they unfold (executed for supposedly starting fires in Chinese houses; revolt is crushed and leaders executed; runner is caught and ripped apart by dogs; each attempt at building a better life is met by impossible economic demands and job restrictions till there is no hope left).

As you go through the story, it becomes increasingly obvious that Hersey is re-telling the history of the Afro-American in America, from the initial forceful grab in Africa, to the 'genteel' society of the early South, to the heyday of large cotton plantations, to the Civil War and through the Reconstruction era, to the move to urban America and the ghettos, and finally right up to the civil rights movement of the '60s, all compressed into 20 years of White Lotus' life. Along the way, he draws some striking portraits of the reasons for so-called 'black' behavior, of the self-blinding hypocrisy of the 'owners', of each individual's struggle to make sense of life, and grindingly destroying all superstitions, (white/yellow/black), heaping copious quantities of lotus petal dung upon them (and most religious beliefs also). If this book was only an exacting mirror of the White/Black struggle, though, it would not be much more than a well-told polemic. But there is an added dimension here: Hersey's portrait of the Chinese culture. The glimpses we are given (looking at it from the perspective of the very bottom of the society) of this China are impressively authentic. Hersey was born in Tienstin, China, in 1914, spent his first 11 years there, and spent much of his early adult life as a journalist in various places in the Orient, and this experience clearly lands on and illuminates these pages. And because the Oriental culture really is different, it provides an odd 'side' look at the whole issue, giving it a whole other dimension of realization. And the final 'solution' of his protagonist, her method of finding her own self-worth and a possible better life for all whites, is uniquely Chinese in character -- shame the yellows into recognizing them as human, by imitating a sleeping bird. This portion of the story is told within an enfolding prologue and epilogue that form a complete (and very powerful) self-standing story, including a very recognizable portrait of Gov. George Wallace as a Chinese warlord (though he never speaks a word).

There are places where this work drags a bit, becomes almost repetitious, where the parallels he draws are too obvious, and the portrayed horrors of life as a slave never reach quite the depths of despair plumbed by something like Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, but this is still a very honest, insightful, competent, and in places brilliant work. It will make you think. It will make you drag out your own prejudices and carefully examine them. It will show you that the American way of life is far from the only model for good living - others may be just as valid or even better. I've had this one on my top 50 SF works ever since I first read it -- it remains there.

I first encountered this book in college, which is (presumably) a radical time in anyone's life. As a student of anthropology, I was being confronted with a number of issues, and this book pretty much served as the wrecking ball which finally destroyed my old opinions regarding race and gender in any given society--and thank heavens for that! This book made me laugh and cry and, most importantly, think. I know it made me a more conscious member of society, and maybe that's what the author set out to do, in addition to simply telling an incredibly gripping tale. In any case, this one is more than worth the effort it takes to track it down. In any age, this one is a classic.

This book will touch you emotionally and intellectually. White Lotus is a view of the future that provides the reader with insights into slavery and the black experience in America. The machines and technology once a part of world culture are gone. American civilization as we know it is gone. A young white girl is captured from her Arizona enclave and marched to the sea. She's transported as a slave to the east to serve the now powerful Chinese. The story is beautifully written and reads well on all levels. The heroine's many experiences mirror the history of the African-American experience leading up to the civil rights movement. White Lotus should be required for reading and discussion in schools and deserves to be reprinted.

As the book 1984 illustrates, a plausible but fictional vision of the future can be a powerful stage on which a great writer can explore human adaptation and adapibility to hitherto unconsidered circumstances. Orwell explored technology's effect in the political arena. Hersey invents a world where white Americans are captured in Arizona, not so secretly transported to China, and enslaved there; this can happen because America lost World War II, or maybe the Vietnam War. A weakness of Hersey is a lack of convincing evidence this would ever happen, but this premise is not the focus of work. Its much less science fiction and more the journal of a female slave through a succession of masters and mates. The latter two add another view to the subject of slavery (cruel master;escape from slavery;religions role in justifying it; servant/slave etiquette; drunken lover;passing for yellow etc.) Often White Lotus' experiences resonate with the history of slavery in the New World: the Underground Railway exists in this work of fiction too. I enjoyed most Hersey's invention of the sleeping bird tactic to shame the yellow to treat the whites decently, and assume its a reference to the sucess of Gandhi's method of non-violence opposition.I agree that Hersey makes White Lotus a convincing character and I plan to read more of his novels.

I first read White Lotus when I was in high school (and that's been awhile). I have read this book three times and would read it again. It's a book I would like to pass on to my grandchildren. I enjoyed it thoroughly. (Now all I have to do is find another copy). Instead of requiring Shakespeare in school, maybe this book should be required reading. It would sure keep a teenager's interest better. I think it should be marked as a classic and be reprinted. I'll be first in line.

I read this book over 40 years ago and have never forgotten it. As China emerges as the economic powerhouse it now is and practically owns us it is a good book to read again. When the book was written no one could even imagine China as the world power it has become. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

This is absolutely the best fictional work about slavery and emancipation I have ever read--eat your heart out, Toni Morrison.

Although Hersey offers very little explanation about how the world got to be the way it was in the book (how would a nation ravaged by smallpox be able to successfully prosecute a war?), he spares no detail concerning how white slaves could fit into Chinese culture.

And yet, the book is not prophetic; it is simply a good read for anyone who is interested in a fresh look at an old issue.

To explain the story of "White Lotus," I offer this quote from "A Time To Kill," the movie based on a John Grisham novel (maybe word-for-word in his novel, I don't recall). These are the last lines in the defense summation: "...Can you see her? Her raped, beaten, broken body soaked in their urine, soaked in their semen, soaked in her blood, left to die. Can you see her? I want you to picture that little girl. Now imagine she's white."

"White Lotus" was published during America's Civil Rights era. I had the privilege to read this story as a teenager while sitting on a hilltop at my grandparents' Cummings, Georgia home. My aunt had handed it to me.

It was life altering, causing me to always question authority, in the first place. I learned that books could matter, most exquisitely. And it caused me to always ask the question, "How would I feel?"

Good question. Always.

I read this book years ago and lost it somewhere along the way. The story has always stayed with me and should be one of the 'Classics'. If I was a literary teacher in high school this is one I'd have my class read, so they could see the 'other side of the coin' since it deals with slavery of the 'white' people. It tells of the injustice that slavery causes for any race of people and I also think it brought me down a notch or two when I was a teenager thinking that just because I was white and had it all that nothing like slavery could happen to me. The story is a real eye-opener and it made me ashamed of what my ancestors did to a proud race of people just because they had different colored skin. Anyway, read the book it's an awesome story.

A young, blond, white American girl watches as the Chinese army marches into her hometown. Her family is split up and she is taken as a SLAVE! When I first read this book, I must have been 13 or so, and I found it to be utterly terrifying. Most Americans who were born and raised in the US have no clue what it would be like to have tanks and intruders rolling into one's town, taking power, taking Democracy, and forcing us to be COMMUNISTS! The premise of the novel is too good to be true. This book is one of the true underdogs or "sleepers" of the dystopian literature. It's a shame more people haven't read it.