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| Pearl Buck (1892-1973) |
The novels of Pearl Buck tell much of what life was like in China during the early 1900s. She was born Pearl Sydenstricken in Hillsboro, West Virginia, but she grew up in China. Her parents were Protestant missionaries, and they took her to China when she was three months old. She lived mostly in China for the first 40 years of her life. She spoke Chinese before she learned to speak English. When she returned to the United States to attend college, she married John L. Buck, another missionary, and returned to China. Mrs. Buck's novels show that she understands and sympathizes with China and its people. She left China in 1933, never to return again. But she took with her memories and experiences that she would recount in her many books.
Pearl Buck is best known for her novel,
The Good Earth, published in 1931. The book, which won the Pulitzer Prize, tells the story of the lives of a Chinese peasant family. Some of her other books include Letter from Peking and Dragon Seed. She has written several children's books, including
The Chinese Children Next Door and
One Bright Day. She told the story of her rich and busy life in
My Several Worlds. Pearl Buck wrote about China so well that she was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1938.
