Pearl S. Buck

Pearl S. Buck

Pearl Buck, ca. 1932.
Born June 26, 1892(1892-06-26)
Hillsboro, West Virginia, United States
Died March 6, 1973(1973-03-06) (aged 80)
Danby, Vermont, United States
Occupation Writer, Missionary
Nationality American
Subjects China
Notable award(s)

Pulitzer Prize
1932

Nobel Prize in Literature
1938

Pearl Sydenstricker Buck (June 26, 1892 — March 6, 1973) also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu (Chinese: 賽珍珠; pinyin: Sài Zhēnzhū), was an award-winning American writer who spent most of her life until 1934 in China. Her novel The Good Earth was the best-selling fiction book in the U.S. in 1931 and 1932, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. In 1938, she became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces."[1]

Contents

Life

The Stulting House at the Pearl Buck Birthplace in Hillsboro, West Virginia

Pearl was born in Hillsboro, West Virginia to Caroline Stulting (1857–1921) and Absalom Sydenstricker. Her parents, Southern Presbyterian missionaries, traveled to China soon after their marriage on July 8, 1880, but returned to the United States for Pearl's birth. When Pearl was three months old, the family returned to China, to be stationed first in Zhenjiang (then often known as Jingjiang or, in the Postal Romanization, Tsingkiang).[2] Pearl grew up bilingual, tutored in English by her mother and in classical Chinese by Mr. Kung.[3]

Chinese man in Zhenjiang, c. 1900

The Boxer Uprising greatly affected Pearl and her family. Pearl's Chinese friends deserted her and her family, and Western visitors decreased too.

In 1911, Pearl left China to attend Randolph-Macon Woman's College,[4] graduating (Phi Beta Kappa) in 1914. From 1914 to 1933, she served as a Presbyterian missionary, but her views later became highly controversial in the Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy, leading to her resignation.[5]

In 1914, Pearl returned to China. She married an agricultural economist missionary, John Lossing Buck, on May 13, 1917, and they moved to Suzhou, Anhui Province, a small town on the Huai River (not be confused with the better-known Suzhou in Jiangsu Province.). It is this region she described later in The Good Earth and Sons.

Nanjing University

From 1920 to 1933, Pearl and John made their home in Nanking (Nanjing), on the campus of Nanjing University, where both had teaching positions. Pearl taught English literature at the University of Nanjing and the Chinese National University. In 1920, the Bucks had a daughter, Carol, afflicted with phenylketonuria. In 1921, Pearl's mother died and shortly afterward her father moved in. In 1924, they left China for John's year of sabbatical and returned to the United States for a short time, during which Pearl earned her Masters degree from Cornell University. In 1925, the Bucks adopted Janice (later surnamed Walsh). That fall, they returned to China.[6]

The tragedies and dislocations that Pearl suffered in the 1920s reached a climax in March 1927, during "Nanking Incident." In a confused battle involving elements of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist troops, Communist forces, and assorted warlords, several Westerners were murdered. Since Absalom was a missionary, the family decided to stay in Nanjing until the battle reached the city. When violence broke out, a poor Chinese family allowed them to hide in their hut while the family house was looted. The family spent a day terrified and in hiding, after which they were rescued by American gunboats. They traveled to Shanghai and then sailed to Japan, where they stayed for a year.[7] They later moved back to Nanjing, though conditions remained dangerously unsettled. In 1934, they left China permanently.

In 1935, the Bucks were divorced. Richard Walsh, president of the John Day Company and her publisher, became Pearl Buck's second husband. The couple lived in Pennsylvania.[8]

During the Cultural Revolution Buck, as a preeminent American writer of Chinese peasant life, was denounced as an "American cultural imperialist." Buck was "heartbroken" when Madame Mao and high-level Chinese officials prevented her from visiting China with Richard Nixon in 1972. [9]

Pearl S. Buck died of lung cancer on March 6, 1973 in Danby, Vermont and was interred in Green Hills Farm in Perkasie, Pennsylvania. She designed her own tombstone. The grave marker is inscribed with Chinese characters representing the name Pearl Sydenstricker.[10]

Humanitarian efforts

Buck was highly committed and passionate about a range of issues that were mostly ignored in her generation; many of her life experiences and political views are described in her novels, short stories, fiction, children's stories, and the biographies of her parents entitled Fighting Angel (on Absalom) and The Exile (on Carrie). She wrote on a diverse variety of topics including woman's rights, Asian cultures, immigration, adoption, missionary work, and war.

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 nearly five decades of work, Welcome House has placed over five thousand children. In 1964, to support children who were not eligible for adoption, Buck established the Pearl S. Buck Foundation to "address poverty and discrimination faced by children in Asian countries." In 1965, she opened the Opportunity Center and Orphanage in South Korea, and later offices were opened in Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam. When establishing Opportunity House, Buck said, "The purpose... is to publicize and eliminate injustices and prejudices suffered by children, who, because of their birth, are not permitted to enjoy the educational, social, economic and civil privileges normally accorded to children."[11]

In the late 1960s, Pearl toured West Virginia to raise money to preserve her family farm in Hillsboro, WV. Today The Pearl S. Buck Birthplace is a historic house museum and cultural center.[12] She hoped the house would "belong to everyone who cares to go there," and serve as a "gateway to new thoughts and dreams and ways of life."[13]

Long before it was considered fashionable or politically safe to do so, Buck challenged the American public on topics such as racism, sex discrimination and the plight of the thousands of babies born to Asian women left behind and unwanted wherever American soldiers were based in Asia. During her life Buck combined the multiple careers of wife, mother, author, editor and political activist.[14]

Legacy

Peter Conn, in his biography of Buck, argues that despite the accolades awarded her, Buck's contribution to literature has been mostly forgotten or deliberately ignored by America's cultural gatekeepers.[15]

Anchee Min, author of a fictionalized life of Buck, broke down upon reading Buck, because she had portrayed the Chinese peasants "with such love, affection and humanity"."[9]

The Pearl S. Buck House at Nanjing University

(賽珍珠故居) Pearl's former residence at Nanjing University is now the Nanjing University Science and Technology Industry Group Building along the West Wall of the university's north campus. U.S. President George H.W. Bush toured the Pearl S. Buck House in October 1998. He expressed that he, like millions of other Americans, had gained an appreciation for the Chinese through Pearl's writing.[16]

Selected bibliography

Autobiographies

Biographies

Novels

Non-fiction

Short Stories

Awards

Museums and historic houses

Several historic sites work to preserve and display artifacts from Pearl's profoundly multicultural life:

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Meyers, Mike. "Pearl of the Orient," New York Times. March 5, 2006.
  2. ↑ Shavit, David (1990), The United States in Asia: a historical dictionary, Greenwood Publishing Group, p. 480, ISBN 031326788X, http://books.google.com.au/books?id=IWdZTaJdc6UC  (Entry for "Sydenstricker, Absalom")
  3. ↑ Peter Conn, Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996) 9, 19–23.
  4. ↑ Randolph-Macon Woman's College
  5. ↑ Conn, Pearl S. Buck, 70–82.
  6. ↑ Conn, Pearl S. Buck, 70–82.
  7. ↑ Buck, Pearl S. The Good Earth. Ed. Peter Conn. New York: Washington Square Press, 1994. Pp. xviii–xix.
  8. ↑ Brady 1998, p. 212
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 NPR, "A Chinese Fan Of Pearl S. Buck Returns The Favor", All Things Considered, April 7, 2010. Accessed 7/4/10
  10. ↑ Conn, Peter, Dragon and the Pearl
  11. ↑ Pearl S. Buck International, "Our History," 2009.
  12. ↑ The Pearl S. Buck Birthplace Foundation, http://www.pearlsbuckbirthplace.com
  13. ↑ Buck, Pearl S. My Mother's House. Richwood, WV: Appalachian Press. Pp. 30–1.
  14. ↑ Brady 1998, p. 212
  15. ↑ Brady, Anne-Marie. Review of Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography by Peter Conn, The China Journal, No. 39 (Jan., 1998), pp. 211–212
  16. ↑ DDMap.com: 賽珍珠故居, http://nj.ddmap.com/map/25/point-659569-%C8%FC%D5%E4-.htm, retrieved 2010-02-21 
  17. ↑ "Pearl S. Buck International: Other Pearl S. Buck Historic Places". Psbi.org. 2006-09-30. http://www.psbi.org/site/PageServer?pagename=PSBH_Other_PSB_Historic_Places. Retrieved 2010-02-25. 

Bibliography

External links

Nobel Laureates in Literature

Grazia Deledda (1926) · Henri Bergson (1927) · Sigrid Undset (1928) · Thomas Mann (1929) · Sinclair Lewis (1930) · Erik Axel Karlfeldt (1931) · John Galsworthy (1932) · Ivan Bunin (1933) · Luigi Pirandello (1934) · Eugene O'Neill (1936) · Roger Martin du Gard (1937) · Pearl S. Buck (1938) · Frans Eemil Sillanpää (1939) · Johannes Vilhelm Jensen (1944) · Gabriela Mistral (1945) · Hermann Hesse (1946) · André Gide (1947) · T. S. Eliot (1948) · William Faulkner (1949) · Bertrand Russell (1950)
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