Pearl S. Buck
1 book analyzed
Biography
Pearl Sydenstricker Buck (1892-1973) was born in West Virginia but raised in China, where her parents were Presbyterian missionaries. She spent most of her childhood and young adulthood in China, learning to speak Chinese before she spoke English fluently. She experienced the 1900 Boxer Rebellion, lived through early twentieth-century Chinese political chaos, and observed rural Chinese farming life with the intimacy of someone who was an outsider by birth but an insider by daily experience. She wrote The Good Earth in 1930-31, drawing on decades of observation. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. In 1938, Buck became the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature — the Nobel committee specifically cited The Good Earth. She was also the first American to win both prizes. After returning to the United States, she became a prominent advocate for Asian-American understanding and founded Welcome House, the first international and interracial adoption agency.