AUTHOR PROFILE
BIOGRAPHY:
Born in Hillsboro, West Virginia in 1892, Pearl S. Buck was given the birth name Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker. No, Bucks County Pennsylvania is not named after her. Buck’s Green Hills Farm and land was owned by generations of Americans, the first being Richard Penn the brother of William Penn, who founded the state of Pennsylvania. He named Bucks County after Buckinghamshire, the county where he lived in England. Although she was the most popular American novelist of her day, they did not name a county after Pearl S. Buck! Pearl Buck was the only one of her siblings born in the United States to Presbyterian Missionaries. So at just three months old she travelled to China with her family. She did not live in a missionary compound but among the Chinese people, where she grew up speaking Chinese, playing with Chinese children, visiting their homes, listening to their ideas and absorbing their culture. Buck later used this rela life material in many of her novels. Her Chinese nanny, also known as Wang Amah, and a Confusion Scholar tutored her in Confucianism, Chinese history, and Chinese writing and reading. However, Pearl S. Buck was also exposed to American culture by her mother. On the Fourth of July there was a homemade American flag displayed, easily obtained fire crackers and 'The Star Spangled Banner' was sung about the organ. Long before she had ever seen America Buck learned to call furlough time 'going home.' In 1910, Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker returned to the United States to attend college at Randolph-Macon, an all-girls school, which was chosen for her because the education would be exactly what a man would get. Pearl had grown up in Asia, but her college mates had neither interest nor knowledge of this land. College was not a welcoming atmosphere and Pearl realized that unless she did something about her ‘strangeness,’ she would spend four lonely and unhappy years there. It took her several weeks of thinking how to adjust to a new culture. Pearl bought American clothes, styled her hair the American way, so externally, she became an American. Eventually, she blended so well and was so admired that she was elected president of her class. Receiving her bachelor’s degree in Philosophy in 1914, she was invited to teach psychology at the same college. However, she received an urgent letter that she was needed to come back to China and care for her very ill mother. When back in China, she decided to marry. Her parents disapproved and they were right, as parents usually are, but just like every other member of the willful Sydenstricker family, Buck went on with her wedding plans. She married John Lossing Buck in 1917 in China and gave birth to a daughter named Carol in 1920. What a miracle her daughter was, but Pearl couldn’t imagine the dark future that was in store for Carol as she lived happily in ignorance for four years. Carol was not developing normally. Doctors didn’t know what was wrong with her and at that time, there was nothing know about phenylketonuria, also known as PKU. Can you believe it? Today, it can be identified with the simple prick of a newborn baby’s heel. However, the genetic disorder wasn’t diagnosed and Pearl wouldn’t find this out until Carol was 30 years old. At that time, there was no way to reverse what this illness did to Carol, but at least other children would not suffer the same fate as her. Pearl realized that she could not care for her daughter on her own, so in 1925, Pearl, her husband, and Carol traveled to the United States. Pearl and Lossing Buck attended Cornell University for their masters degrees, in literature and agriculture, respectively. In the U.S., Pearl spent much of her time visiting many doctors and specialists trying to find a cure for Carol. When they returned to China, it was with an American baby girl whom they had adopted and named Janice, to be a companion for Carol, in hopes this would help her develop normally. It was at this point that Pearl began to write feverishly, to support her daughter. Pearl S. Buck wrote her first novel, East Wind, West Wind. Pearl Buck had faced discrimination much of her childhood in China, being called a foreign devil because of her blonde hair and blue eyes. However, in March of 1927, her life completely changed when the Nanking Incident occurred, and her worst fears had come true. The Sydenstricker family was in danger for their lives because they were white people in a Chinese city. They would have lost their lives without the help of some of their Chinese friends who gave them shelter. With the help of their friends they managed to make it through that night and escaped to Japan for shelter and peace. Eventually, they were welcomed back into China. However, there was still so much turmoil and uncertainty that Buck traveled back to the United States and placed Carol in the Vineland Training School in 1929. This is when she heard that her first novel East Wind, West Wind had been accepted for publishing by the John Day Company. This is also where Pearl would meet her future husband and publisher, Richard Walsh. Pearl Buck returned to China immediately after signing the contract and sat down at her typewriter and began to write The Good Earth. This was the book that changed her life forever in more ways than one. Not only did this novel change her life, but she also began a much closer relationship with her publisher and future husband. She was awarded the Pulitzer in 1932 for The Good Earth, which remained on the best seller list for 21 months. Buck also won the Nobel Prize in 1938, receiving the award from the King of Sweden. It was time for Buck to leave China, forever, for many reasons. In 1934, she returned to America and purchased her Green Hills Farm, her American home. How would Buck’s neighbors accept that this wasn’t just going to be her home, but would also be a house for a new family after two divorces? Well they did accept it and she knew right then that this was where she would spend the rest of her life. So she packed her bags and headed out for the divorce capital of the world at that time, Reno, Nevada! She divorced Lossing Buck and married her publisher Richard Walsh on the same day. Upon her return to Green Hills Farm, she knew that her house without children would not be a home. So they adopted six babies and they fostered many children to fill their home. In 1949, Pearl Buck started Welcome House. She collaborated with famous people such as Oscar Hammerstein, Lois and David Burpee, and James Michener right in the living room of the Pearl S. Buck House! They found homes for biracial children who were considered unadoptable, simply because of the circumstances of their birth, meaning they didn’t look like most of the children in that community. Due to the changing policies of adoption and the lack of children available, Welcome House closed its doors in 2014. Buck may have mixed emotions today knowing that Welcome House has closed, but that was actually her dream: to find homes for all of these children therefore not needing a program specifically for children of color any longer. In addition to Welcome House, she opened a sponsorship program in 1964 for children overseas. This work continues today through Pearl S. Buck International, supporting children around the globe who suffer from injustices and prejudices because of their birth. They receive educational, nutritional and social benefits they would not receive otherwise. Can you imagine when Buck had time to even sleep? But she wouldn’t stop there! She believed in cross cultural understanding and racial harmony! She stood with the Civil Rights Movement, published Asia magazine with her husband, and developing the East and West Association to bring about even more knowledge and understanding between East and West. She wrote 80 works of fiction, 40 non-fiction and thousands of articles. Her words still ring true today. She traveled all over the world, and wanted everyday people to come together from all parts of the world to celebrate their differences. Her last effort in life was to revive the town of Danby, Vermont, and make it a blossoming community. On March 6, 1973, Buck passed away of lung cancer, shortly before her 81st birthday. She is buried, as she requested, on the grounds of Green Hills Farm. You can learn more about her at www.pearlsbuck.org. |
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Where do you write?
As I’ve said in some of my books before, you fall in love with a house just as you do with a person. And oh, how I loved this house. I told people that I would spend the rest of my life here, and I have. My name is Pearl S. Buck and I am also known by my Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu; Chinese: 賽珍珠. I am buried on the Bucks County, Pennsylvania property now designated as a National Historic Landmark Home since 1980.
I am buried at the end of the drive way and when I walk up I see the big red barn, the finest in the whole area. Today, it’s still similar to what it was when my husband and children were still here-- a community place for parties, weddings, and various local gatherings. Just beyond the barn is my house. This house was the root place of my American life; my first years here were absorbed re-designing and building it. It was a place to which I brought the culture of China, where I spent the first forty years of my life, and incorporated it into the beauty of Pennsylvania.
This is where I wrote, using my success in writing to fuel my active role in humanitarian work. I left my home to the Pearl S. Buck Foundation in hopes that they would continue my mission, and it appears today that it is known as Pearl S. Buck International and this is the headquarters. I see today they are giving tours of my home. How wonderful it is to see those favorite possessions that reflect who I am - the table where my family had conversations about their day while enjoying home cooked meals; the bench that I sat on waiting to meet my second husband and publisher Richard J. Walsh to discuss publishing The Good Earth and other works; the carpets from my Chinese home - so many treasures from my travels. In my private library is my most prized possession, my Charles Dickens novels. How wonderful it is to see them and to know that my mission is still alive
I am buried at the end of the drive way and when I walk up I see the big red barn, the finest in the whole area. Today, it’s still similar to what it was when my husband and children were still here-- a community place for parties, weddings, and various local gatherings. Just beyond the barn is my house. This house was the root place of my American life; my first years here were absorbed re-designing and building it. It was a place to which I brought the culture of China, where I spent the first forty years of my life, and incorporated it into the beauty of Pennsylvania.
This is where I wrote, using my success in writing to fuel my active role in humanitarian work. I left my home to the Pearl S. Buck Foundation in hopes that they would continue my mission, and it appears today that it is known as Pearl S. Buck International and this is the headquarters. I see today they are giving tours of my home. How wonderful it is to see those favorite possessions that reflect who I am - the table where my family had conversations about their day while enjoying home cooked meals; the bench that I sat on waiting to meet my second husband and publisher Richard J. Walsh to discuss publishing The Good Earth and other works; the carpets from my Chinese home - so many treasures from my travels. In my private library is my most prized possession, my Charles Dickens novels. How wonderful it is to see them and to know that my mission is still alive
What other creative activities are you involved in?
These are things that life teaches us, of what we can do best. I had a period when I struggled with two other things that I might have done. One was to be a musician, because I love music. I like to compose music. One other temptation was to become a sculptor. I did not allow myself that because I felt that was still not the thing I wanted to do most. So I contented myself with sculpture as avocation. I did my children’s heads and heads of friends and people that I imagined.
Tell us about the mechanics of how you write.
Writing is a both a discipline and a joy for me. First, I have the responsibility of my beloved daughter Carol whose personal care is costly. Second, is the fact that I know no other way to funnel my energies toward my specific causes which I champion – equality, justice, human rights, and opportunity for all. I hope to change what I can of these social conditions and individual tragedies with my stories. Story-telling is a profession in China where I grew up so, I am simply using what I learned as a child.
Of course, I am always grateful to Charles Dickens, who influenced by writing and view of people. He too was a working writer, observing people and jotting notes in the carriage rides back from trials. I read so much of Dickens that I believe that I absorbed his method of conceiving the entire story in my head before I put pen to paper. He wrote his novels for serialization with eighteen separate chapters followed by a double chapter. How did he keep all those characters and events organized?
I am able to write my stories in much the same way. I seldom change an action or, indeed, even a word once I have written it. I don’t know why or how I achieved such a gift. I have to admit that my father was a prodigious scholar and my mother a storehouse of stories so I suppose that it came to me naturally. Really, writing is no effort for me. I must write. I do write, every day, passionately and diligently. It is my joy to see the story being told.
Of course, I am always grateful to Charles Dickens, who influenced by writing and view of people. He too was a working writer, observing people and jotting notes in the carriage rides back from trials. I read so much of Dickens that I believe that I absorbed his method of conceiving the entire story in my head before I put pen to paper. He wrote his novels for serialization with eighteen separate chapters followed by a double chapter. How did he keep all those characters and events organized?
I am able to write my stories in much the same way. I seldom change an action or, indeed, even a word once I have written it. I don’t know why or how I achieved such a gift. I have to admit that my father was a prodigious scholar and my mother a storehouse of stories so I suppose that it came to me naturally. Really, writing is no effort for me. I must write. I do write, every day, passionately and diligently. It is my joy to see the story being told.
Finally, what do you think about Carp, the fish, not our website?
Carp. What a good name for a worthy literary journal? In China, carp are the golden fish of good fortune and many homes provide ponds of them where they grow to enormous size. In Chinese culture, statues of Quan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy, often have two gigantic carp standing beside her as the symbol of her role as goddess of the rivers and seas. Quan Yin is a beloved figure of the feminine caring nature of a benevolent creator. So also does literature provide a sheltered space in which to create peace within ourselves. I currently have four statues of Quan Yin in my house at Green Hills Farm.