Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker Buck was an American writer and humanitarian. She is best known for The Good Earth, the best-selling novel in the United States in 1931 and 1932, which won her the Pulitzer Prize in 1932, making her the first American woman to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was also awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces.”
She was born in West Virginia, but her parents moved to China when she was a child. Pearl S. Buck had a lifelong connection to China, where she was raised and spoke Chinese first, leading to a unique “culturally bifocal” identity.
She founded the Welcome House adoption agency to facilitate international and interracial adoptions, a passion stemming from her own experience as the mother of a disabled child.
She was a strong advocate for the rights of people of color and different nationalities, even publishing articles urging fair treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II.
Buck was instrumental in changing American perceptions of China, rallying support during the Sino-Japanese War and advocating for repealing the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Despite winning the Nobel Prize and her popularity, neither the American nor the Chinese literary establishment fully embraced her, largely due to her unique position and background.
In 1972, she was denied a visa to visit China, a decision that pained her deeply, given her lifelong love for the country and its people.
Throughout her years as a writer, Pearl Buck was an avid journalist. Writing regularly for such publications as Harper’s, Collier’s, the Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, Opportunity, Yale Review, Asia magazine, the New York Times Magazine and Redbook, she wrote about numerous popular topics of the day and was considered a foremost voice on women’s rights and relations between East and West.
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