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Pearl S. Buck

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  Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker was born on June 26, 1892. Her father, Absalom Sydenstricker, and her mother, Caroline Sydenstricker, were home on leave from their work as Presbyterian missionaries in China. Pearl was the fifth child of Absalom and Caroline- two little sisters and one little brother had already died in China of a tropical disease. Her other brother, Edgar, was 12 years old when she was born. Pearl went with her family to China when she was only three months old. She was bilingual from the start. Until Pearl was 8 years old, she was taught by her mother at home. Though she lived in China, Pearl learned about America. She later said in her autobiography, "Though I lived in China, I was taught no more of the history and geography of that land than if I had lived in Peoria, Illinois. I grew up in a double world, the small white clean Presbyterian world of my parents and the big loving merry not-too-clean Chinese world."

  When Pearl was six, her brother Clyde, born a year after Pearl, died. Her other brother, Edgar, was sent back to America to live with relatives. Pearl was left as the only child in the home until 1900, when her sister, Grace, was born. One day, Absalom came home, bloody. He had been tied to a post and forced to watch a Christian Chinese man being tortured. Tensions were rising because of a group called the Boxers, who had an anti-Western racist theology and went around killing anyone who wasn't Chinese- as well as many who were. To protect the family, Pearl, her sister and their mother were forced to evacuate to Shanghai. Absalom stayed behind in Chinkiang. After a year, the rebellion of the Boxers was put down by the U.S. and Japan. Pearl, Grace and their mother were able to return to Chinkiang. Soon after this, the Sydenstrickers took another leave- which was their first in eight years- and returned to the U.S. Pearl attended third grade in Lexington, Virginia. After that, the Sydenstrickers were back off to Chinkiang, China. Pearl spent a year in a Shanghai boarding school-called the Jewell School. There she found she had nothing in common with anyone there-no one shared her respect for the Chinese culture. When she told her room mates that she found many points of similarity between the teachings of Confucius and Jesus, they told the head mistress and Pearl was banished to a small single room. However, Pearl enjoyed the privacy.

  For college, Pearl went to Randolph-Macon Women's College in Lynchburg, Virginia. It was her second trip to the U.S. and instead of traveling on the Pacific Ocean, as they did the first time, the Sydenstrickers traveled across Europe and then over the Atlantic Ocean. They spent a lot of time traveling in Europe and seeing the sights. Pearl arrived in 1910 and loved all four years of college, although she always felt a little out of place and tried to imitate American girls. In 1914, Pearl learned that her mother had contracted sprue, a fatal tropical disease. She secured a teaching job for the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions in China and traveled back to China as quickly as possible (for it was during the time of WWI). In China, she worked and took care of her mother-trying to nurse her back to health.

  In 1917, Pearl married John Lossing Buck, a missionary in China. Her parents objected because it didn't seem the two had much in common, but Pearl went ahead and married Lossing Buck anyway. Pearl stepped into the job as a missionary's wife willingly, but found it somewhat confining. In 1918, their daughter, Caroline Grace (called Carol), was born. After Carol's birth, Pearl had to have surgery on a benign tumor, and although she recovered well, she couldn't have any more children. Soon after this, Pearl's mother died and her father and sister, Grace, moved in with the Bucks. As Carol grew up, Pearl began to notice she wasn't developing at a normal rate. On leave to America, she took Carol to many child psychiatrists, specialists and clinics. Finally, doctors told her Carol was mentally retarded and would never be able to walk or talk properly. They advised Pearl to put her daughter in an institution but Pearl refused. Also during this time in America, Pearl adopted a three-month old girl, whom she named Janice, and earned a master's degree.

  When the Bucks finally returned to China, American missionaries were warned to leave Nanking, China (where the Bucks' lived) because they feared they might be taken hostage, as the tensions were high between the Chinese nationalist party and the Soviet Union. However, the Bucks refused to go, wanting to show their support for the Nationalist party. In March of 1927, the Nationalists started killing Westerners. For 13 hours, one day, the Bucks huddled in a tiny mud hut of a servant's. They lost everything they owned but came out alive.

  Soon after, the Bucks, along with her sister Grace's family (she had married and had two children) and her father, moved to Shanghai for a year. After that, she realized that China was too unstable and chaotic for Carol and took her back to America where she enrolled her in the Vineland Training School. To help pay for the tuition, Pearl wrote The Young Revolutionist, a children's book that explained the role of missionaries. When the Bucks moved back to Nanking. Here she managed to write and after sending her first manuscript in, East Wind, West Wind (originally titled Winds of Heaven) was published by Richard Walsh, of the John Day Company. Her next novel was titled The Mother. Then she wrote The Good Earth, about a Chinese family struggling to make a living and eventually getting rich. This book won her a Pulitzer Prize, as well as an honorary Masters degree from Yale, and was made into a play and a movie.

  After this success, Pearl was divorced from her husband- John Lossing Buck. The marriage ended without much fuss-they both simply realized they were moving in different directions. After the divorce, Pearl moved to the U.S. She got a job as an editor at the John Day Company and continued writing. Her next novel was The Exile, a biography of her mother. Soon Pearl realized she was falling in love with her publisher- Richard Walsh. They worried that a second marriage might cause a scandal but as always, Pearl went ahead and did what she wanted. Richard Walsh and Pearl Buck were married in 1935. After their marriage, the couple moved into a farmhouse on 50 acres of land in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. They also bought a penthouse in New York City, where they lived during the week while they worked.

  During this time, Pearl adopted two more children- Richard and John. They were both just new-borns when they came to live with Pearl. In 1937, the first movie version of The Good Earth was released. In 1938, Pearl's greatest achievement happened- she was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. She was only the second woman ever to win the Nobel Prize. After that, Pearl continued to write but now she also placed philanthropy and humanitarianism as a major priority. She devoted a lot of time to helping children- especially Asian American children. Over the years, Pearl and Richard adopted a total of nine children. In 1966, the Pearl S. Buck Foundation for Amerasian Children was dedicated. The foundation provided adoption services, education and support to American-Asian children in wherever their homeland was. The foundation still continues its work today.

  Pearl S. Buck died March 6, 1973. Pearl wrote almost 100 books in her lifetime, and helped ten times that many children. She raised 9 adopted children, and cared for her natural-born, mentally retarded, daughter. She definitely qualifies as a classic.

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