Prairie Lotus

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. The completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869 was an extremely significant event in US history. Why was rail transportation so important to early America? Brainstorm 5-6 specific reasons. What is meant by “railroad towns?” Why and where did they typically exist? How were railroad towns different from other frontier towns?

Teaching Suggestion: Begin your contextual study of Prairie Lotus by explaining to students that main character Hanna travels to a newly constructed railroad town in Dakota territory, 1880. While the town of LaForge in the novel is fictitious, author Linda Sue Park modeled it after the railroad town of DeSmet in what is now South Dakota. (Be sure to read Park’s Author’s Note before beginning your unit for a full understanding of the connection to DeSmet.)

• “The Impact of the Transcontinental Railroad” on PBS’s The American Experience site summarizes the cause-and-effect of this gamechanger in US history, including some of its negative consequences.
• For a colorful characterization of railroad towns, try this brief description from the University of Groningen’s American History: From Revolution to Reconstruction and Beyond project.
• For a much more thorough look at the history and impact of railroad towns, “Towns of the Western Railroads” in Great Plains Quarterly offers a scholarly study with diagrams and descriptions.
• Hanna mentions the Golden Spike Ceremony, at which the two lengths of the Transcontinental Railroad, east and west, joined to complete its construction in Promontory Point, Utah Territory in 1869. (The photo on the above page from the National Park Service identifies some of those in attendance, including James Strobridge, supervisor of the western length, whom Hannah pointedly mentions in Chapter 20.)

2. Imagine life in a small frontier town in the American West in the late 1800s. What images and details come to mind? Try to note at least one supposition you have about daily life in a frontier town in each of the following categories: education, clothing, transportation, food, diversity.

Teaching Suggestion: Connect to the novel by explaining that through the story’s third-person perspective limited to Hanna, notable details with regard to each of those categories will quickly surface; students can read as historical investigators to see how their suppositions compare.

• From The Library of Congress, “The American West, 1865-1900” overviews westward expansion after the Civil War. This brief reading broaches the negative impact on Native peoples, mentions the influx of Chinese rail construction workers, and contrasts the traditional, romanticized view of the “wild west” with the idea of westward settlement as a “crossroads of cultures”—all excellent points of connection with the novel.
• “DeSmet in 1883”  from the South Dakota Historical Society Press and this History page on the “DeSmet, South Dakota: The ‘Wilder’ Life” travel site offer info, maps, and photos close to the era.
• Writer Kristen Holt’s historical site “Education in the Old West” includes photos and facts that might help readers visualize Hanna’s school and peers.

Short Activity

Craft a timeline of the history of Chinese immigration in America. Use scholarly online resources to gather your information and list notable facts, events, reasons for emigrating, and influences concerning the Chinese population in the US from approximately the mid-1800s to the early 1900s.

Teaching Suggestion: Hanna’s mother was an immigrant from China; her father is a white man. Despite the obvious crucial impact of Chinese workers in the recent completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, Chinese immigrants and people of Chinese descent living in America are treated with intolerance and hostility in the novel. As students discover mentions of historical events in the novel (e.g., the Los Angeles riots, the Chinese railroad laborers, the illegality of marriage between Papa and Mama), they can return to their timelines and note the impact of events on characters along with consistent connections to the theme of The Struggle for Acceptance and Inclusivity.

• This very brief PBS History Detectives Special Investigation timeline of Chinese immigration in the US can serve as an overview to introduce this topic or to inform students’ timelines.
• Start on this introductory page on the Library of Congress’s Immigration and Relocation in US History: Chinese site; then reference each subsequent page.
• Chinese Immigration and the Chinese Exclusion Acts on the US Department of State’s Office of the Historian site offers a more complete description of the Exclusion Act.