White Lotus

by John Hersey

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0394451716
• ISBN13: 9780394451718
• Release Date: January 1965
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 685 Pages
• Weight: 1.90 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Apocalyptic times with Americans sent to China as slaves...

White Lotus evokes the terrible times of our African Americans and what they felt and endured under slavery...This young girl is kidnapped and sold into slavery..in China...after "the WAR"...and how she deals with each person she comes in contact with...for her evolution..and survival... a classic...

One of my top 5 of all time

I'm on my second copy; this one is hardbound so maybe it will hold up. I've read it at least 6 times and it gets better with each reading. It is long but every word, every scene, every character counts. Hersey grew up in China and clearly knows the culture, but he also understands slavery and oppression, how they corrupt - and the process of freedom. This is a book that can change lives.

This one will make you think...

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.

A new visit to an old friend

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

A Life Changing Experience

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.

Read several times

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.

Disturbing

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.