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41 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A new visit to an old friend, August 19, 2001
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.
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