Rebels of the Heavenly Kingdom
*** By Katherine Paterson. As you might expect from a muliple Newbery award-winner, Paterson's other books aren't half-bad either. She has a couple dozen or so, of which I've read many, but I've got a ways to go. Whilst picking up Lyddie for a class of mine, I also picked up Rebels. Good choice, Lisa!
When I was a kid, call it childish racial prejudice or merely prescience, I steered clear of Paterson's Asian-focused books. In the case of Rebels, it was probably just as well I waited. The book is of very fine but dense prose, and of exactly the voice you would imagine telling you a based-on-the-true-story story of 19th century China: exceedingly formal and a touch mythic. This would have done me in as a younger reader, even if I had gotten through the foreign names. I would have tossed the book aside as boring and perhaps never have picked it up again.
And then I really would have been missing something. Rebels tells the story of a young man, Wang Lee, kidnapped during the crumbling of the Manchu dynasty in China and indoctrinated into the rebel group Taiping. It is a time where European imperialism is reaching steadily eastward, the Manchu government is crumbling under its corruption, and rebel groups are springing up claiming the Mandate of Heaven.
What makes Taiping unique is its intriguing philosophy: a melange of Christianity, Confucionism, and other traditional Chinese wisdom. Taiping strives to bring the New Age, and to realize their vision of the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace while following the Ten Holy Precepts (Commandments). But Wang Lee and his companions are faced with the bitter irony of fighting a revolution to bring God's kingdom to Earth while breaking the Precept against killing time after time.
Ultimately Wang Lee comes to question whether such hypocrisy can ever provide long-term success. Instead, it seems that love, kindness, and family are the true seeds of promise and change. This conclusion does not come easily. Rebels is a bloody tale of a bloody war, and Taiping's dilemma strikes as close to the heart today as in any day that brother is pit against brother, sister against sister. I hope that children do read this book, but just as much I hope adults do.
Posted by Lisa on August 26, 2004 09:32 PM