Pearl Buck

Pearl S. Buck
File:Pearl S Buck.jpg Pearl S. Buck
Born
June 26, 1892 Hillsboro, West Virginia, United States
Died
March 6, 1973 Danby, Vermont, United States

Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, most familiarly known as Pearl Buck (birth name Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker; Chinese: 赛珍珠; pinyin: Sài Zhēnzhū) (June 26, 1892 – March 6, 1973), was a prolific American writer and Nobel Prize winner. She is considered to be one of the most prominent writers of American naturalism, carrying on in the tradition of objective, journalistic prose pioneered by the likes of Frank Norris and Stephen Crane. Although she lived during the period dominated by literary Modernism, her prose stood out for its clear accesibility, as well as for its overarching concern with the moral pratfalls of society. In addition to her elegant style and her acute sense of morality, Buck is also in important figure in the history of American literature due to her connections with the cultures of Asia, and China in particular. Buck, born to missionary parents, lived the first 18 years of her life in China, learned Chinese as her first language, and spent much of her career explicitly concerned with the troubled relations and conflicting values of the East and West. Her novel, The Good Earth, for which she was awarded her Nobel Prize, is considered to be one of the greatest works of Asian literature written from a Western perspective. Buck remains an important figure to scholars of Asian, Asian-American, and American culture alike, and her writings retain a freshness and vigor that have made them into enduring classics.

Life

Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker was born in Hillsboro, West Virginia to Caroline (Stulting) and Absalom (Andrew) Sydenstricker, both southern Presbyterian missionaries. The family was sent to Zhenjiang, China in 1892 when Pearl was 3 months old. She was raised in China and learned the Chinese language and customs from a teacher named Mr. Kung. She was taught English as a second language by her mother and tutor. She was encouraged to write at an early age.

In 1910, she left for America to attend Randolph-Macon Woman's College [1], where she would earn her degree in 1914. She then returned to China, and married an agricultural economist, John Lossing Buck, on May 13, 1917. In 1921, she and John had a daughter, Carol, who was afflicted with phenylketonuria. The small family then moved to Nanjing, where Pearl taught English literature at the University of Nanking. In 1925, the Bucks adopted Janice (later surnamed Walsh). In 1926, she left China and returned to the United States for a short time in order to earn her Master of Arts degree from Cornell University.

Buck began her writing career in 1930 with her first publication of East Wind:West Wind. In 1931, she wrote her most famous novel, The Good Earth (considered to be one of the best of her many works). The story of the farmer Wang Lung's life won her the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1932. Her career continued to flourish; she won the William Dean Howells Medal in 1935.

The Bucks were forced to leave China in 1934 due to political tensions. When they returned to the United States, Pearl and John divorced. She then married Richard J. Walsh, president of the John Day Publishing Company, on June 11 1935, and with him, adopted six other children. In 1938, she became the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, awarded to her for her biographies of her parents, The Exile, and The Fighting Angel.

In her lifetime, Pearl S. Buck would write over 100 works of literature, her best-known being The Good Earth. The Good Earth chronicled the fictional life of the farmer Wang Lung against the backdrop of 20^th century turmoil and revolution in China. It traces the rise of Wang Lung from the abject poverty of his early days to his final years by which he had accumulated great wealth and power. The novel portrays the complexities of marriage, parenthood, joy, pain, and human frailty. Buck stresses in the novel the value of fertile land, hard work, thrift, and responsibility. The novel has a very circular feel to it, recreating the ebb and flow of life, the change of seasons, and the cycles of age and family. Buck’s writing is unique in the way it blends the technical language of the King James Bible with the simplicity and directness of the old Chinese narrative sagas.

Home

Buck wrote about her experiences in China from her home in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. In 1935, she bought a sixty-acre homestead she called Green Hills Farm and moved into a hundred year-old farmhouse on the property with her second husband, Richard Walsh, and their family of eight children.

Green Hills Farm is where Buck spent thirty-eight years of her life, raising her family, writing, pursuing humanitarian interests, and gardening. She completed many works while living in Pennsylvania, such as This Proud Heart (1938), The Patriot (1939), Today and Forever (1941), and The Child Who Never Grew (1950).

Humanitarian efforts

Pearl Buck was an extremely passionate activist for human rights. In 1949, outraged that existing adoption services considered Asian and mixed-race children unadoptable, Pearl established Welcome House, Inc., the first international, interracial adoption agency. In the nearly five decades of its work, Welcome House has assisted in the placement of over five thousand children. In 1964, to provide support for Asian-American children who were not eligible for adoption, Pearl also established the Pearl S. Buck Foundation, which provides sponsorship funding for thousands of children in half a dozen Asian countries.

Many of Buck's life experiences are described in her novels, short stories, fiction, and children's stories. Through them she sought to prove to her readers that universality of mankind can exist if man accepts it. She dealt with many topics including women's rights, emotions (in general), Asian cultures, immigration, adoption, and conflicts that many people go through in life.

The Pearl S. Buck Foundation, which merged with Welcome House and is now known as Pearl S. Buck International Inc., came under fire in the press in 2004 when it was alleged that donations for the humanitarian organization were redirected to staff salaries and upkeep associated with the Green Hills Farm museum (Lester, 2004).

Pearl S. Buck died on March 6, 1973 in Danby, Vermont and was interred in Green Hills Farm, Perkasie, Pennsylvania.

Selected bibliography

Non-fiction

• China as I See It (1970)
• The Story Bible (1971)

Novels

• East Wind:West Wind (1930)
• The Good Earth (1931)
• Sons (1933)
• A House Divided (1935)
• This Proud Heart (1938)
• Dragon Seed (1942)
• Pavilion of Women (1946)
• Peony (1948)
• God's Men (1951)
• Come, My Beloved (1953)
• Imperial Woman (1956)
• The Living Reed (1963)
• The Three Daughters of Madame Liang (1969)

Biographies

• The Exile (1936)
• Fighting Angel (1936)

Autobiographies

• My Several Worlds (1954)
• A Bridge For Passing (1962)

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Lester, Patrick, "Local charity probe", (Doylestown, PA) Intelligencer-Record, Calkins, April 18, 2004, pp. A1. (written in English)

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