Pearl was born in Hillsboro, West Virginia, in 1892. Her parents, Absalom and Caroline Sydenstricker, were Presbyterian missionaries, working in China. They were home on furlough when Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker was born. Pearl was taken to China when her parents returned there three months later, and she spent most of the first 40 years of her life there.
A good biography of Pearl S. Buck is available online through the English Department of the University of Pennsylvania.
Pearl spoke both English and Chinese growing up. She enrolled in Randolph-Macon Woman's College, in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1910 amd graduated in 1914 before returning to China to take care of her mother. In 1915, she met John Lossing Buck; they married in 1917 and moved to a rural section of Anhui province in China, where John worked as a agricultural economist. It was in this part of China that Pearl Buck gathered the material for The Good Earth and other stories of China.
Life was hard for Pearl. Her marriage was unhappy for most of its 18 years. Her only child, Carol (born 1921), was a victim of PKU and profoundly retarded. Pearl's mother died the year Carol was born.
Pearl began her career as a writer with magazine stories and essays. Her first novel, East Wind, West Wind, was published in 1930. The publisher, Richard Walsh, eventually became Pearl's second husband.
In 1931, Pearl's second novel, The Good Earth, was published. It won the Pulitzer Prize and the Howells Medal in 1935, and was made into a major MGM film in 1937.
Pearl died in 1973 after publishing over seventy books including children's literature and translations from the Chinese.
Pearl left China in 1934 and bought an old farmhouse, Green Hills Farm, in Bucks County, PA. She and her second husband adopted six children in the years following the move. Green Hills Farm is now on the Registry of Historic Buildings; fifteen thousand people visit each year.
Today, the Pearl S. Buck Foundation carries on the work Pearl and her husband Richard started in 1942 when they founded the East and West Association; the association was dedicated to cultural understanding between Asia and the West. In 1949, Pearl founded Welcome House, the first international, inter-racial adoption agency. Welcome House has since helped in the adoption of more than five thousand children.
Go To Page: 1 2
| Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: | View all related messages |
For a complete listing of article comments, questions, and other discussions related to Greg Cruey's Appalachia topic, please visit the Discussions page.