Planted in the Shadows: Centering Sexual Violence in Prairie Lotus, Little House on the Prairie, and Oliver Optic's Hope and Have

Abstract

Criticism of Linda Sue Park's Prairie Lotus (2020) has focused on this text as a rewriting of Little House on the Prairie, particularly the idea that this work—which stars an Asian American heroine—corrects the more troubling aspects of Little House. This essay instead focuses on the sexual violence that seeps into and concludes Park's work. I examine this alongside a 19th century text by Oliver Optic that also features sexual violence in the American West; in so doing I reframe Prairie Lotus as a text worth examining as a reflection of the history of sexualized violence against Asian American women and girls.