Pearl S Buck

Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker was born June 26, 1892 in Hillsboro, West Virginia at the home of her mother’s family. Pearl’s parents had been Presbyterian missionaries in China since 1880 and were home on furlough when she was born. They returned to China five months after Pearl’s birth. Pearl’s parents preferred to live among the Chinese and not in the missionary compound. Thus, she grew up in close intimacy with the Chinese people, speaking Chinese, playing with Chinese children, visiting their homes, listening to their ideas and absorbing their culture. These experiences helped to develop the mind and the imagination of an alert, intelligent child, who later used this material in her novels. Pearl was home-schooled by her mother, who insisted that Pearl write something each week. At age six, her first published work appeared in the English-language Shanghai Mercury, a newspaper with a weekly children’s edition. Being an avid reader and having few books available, she started at the age of seven reading Oliver Twist. Each year she read through the family’s collection of Charles Dickens. She later said this influenced her style of writing. Mr. Kung, a Confucian scholar, tutored Pearl in Confucianism, Chinese history, and Chinese writing and reading. Although Pearl Buck lived in China, she also was exposed to American culture. Her mother observed all American holidays, and the meals were as American as her mother could provide. In 1910, Pearl returned to the United States and enrolled in Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg, Virginia. She received a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy in 1914 and was invited to teach psychology at the college. After one semester, she returned to China to care for her ill mother. In 1917 she married John Lossing Buck, an American agricultural missionary. The couple spent their first five years in a small town in North China. Memories of peasant life in the region became the basis for her best-known work, The Good Earth. On March 4, 1920, Pearl Buck gave birth to her only biological child, Carol. She was concerned that Carol was not developing normally, but received little or no support from her husband or doctors. At that time, nothing was known about the eventual diagnosis of PKU syndrome (phenylketonuria), which results in progressive mental deterioration if not treated immediately at birth. In 1929, Pearl enrolled Carol at the Vineland Training School in Vineland, New Jersey, where she lived until her death in 1992. In 1925, the Buck family came to the United States to Cornell University, where Pearl Buck received her MA in English Literature. Before returning to China, the couple adopted an American baby girl and named her Janice. Pearl Buck and her family returned to America in 1934 to escape the threatening atmosphere for foreigners in China, a result of the struggle between the Nationalists and the Communists. At the same time, she and Richard Walsh had developed a more personal relationship. Pearl divorced Lossing Buck and married Richard in 1935. She purchased Green Hills Farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where she and Richard raised a large international family including their seven adopted children and several foster children. In 1938, Pearl Buck was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature for her epic portrayal of Chinese peasant life and for the biographies of her parents. She was the first American woman to be awarded both the Pulitzer and Nobel Prizes for literature. In 1964, the Pearl S. Buck Foundation was created as a child sponsorship organization to help children in their own countries with health, education and job training. Pearl S. Buck died of lung cancer on March 6, 1973, shortly before her 81st birthday