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The Resurrection of Pearl Buck
Pearl Buck’s chronicles of everyday life in China won her millions of readers and a Nobel Prize. They also won her the scorn of highbrow Western critics and the venom of China’s Communist leaders. Now her adopted land is rediscovering the work of this woman once denounced as a cultural enemy.
As Pearl Buck neared her 80th birthday, she became obsessed by the idea of returning to China. It was the early 1970s, and Buck, the American author who had won the Nobel Prize for her books set in China, had not set foot there herself in nearly four decades, as the country was transformed by the Japanese invasion, civil war, and the triumph of communism.
Although she had been born in West Virginia in 1892 while her missionary parents were home on leave, China was the country where she had grown up, first married, and written her most famous novel, The Good Earth (1931). Chinese was her first language, the one in which she mentally composed sentences before putting them to paper in English. China had provided much of the material for many of her 70-odd books, mostly novels but also plays, short fiction, children’s stories, biographies of her parents, essays, and poetry. China had inspired her humanitarian work. And it was in China that her adored mother, her father, two brothers, and two sisters lay buried.
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Sheila Melvin, a writer and journalist, is coauthor, with her husband, Jindong Cai, of Rhapsody in Red: How Western Classical Music Became Chinese (2004). She divides her time between Palo Alto, California, and Beijing.
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Overdue and welcome
To say only the Chinese may write about themselves is to say the Chinese may have no friends; and to hint they may write only about themselves. Directors Ang Lee and Wayne Wang have broken out of that mental ghetto. Pearl Buck's reinclusion in the canon is overdue and welcome. G. Leonard, Editor in Chief, the Asian Pacific American Heritage: a companion to Literature and Arts (Routledge.)
Posted by: George J. Leonard | 7/5/06
Familiar story
There is a similar story in the March 6, 2006 New York Times Book Review, though with less parsing of Peter Conn's excellent biography. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/books/review/05meyer.html?ex=1152331200&en=7031db7b1653f7c2&ei=5070
Posted by: Sam Forks | 7/6/06
ghetto?
The greater part of China never turned her away. The walls lie not between Buck and China but Buck and the majority of Chinese, and those few who did even more untruthful things to their fellow Chinese. Some inhabit the ghetto, Mr. Leonard, and some inhabit it.
Posted by: mo | 7/6/06
"some guard it", reads the last sentence.
Posted by: Mo | 7/6/06
Lu Xun quote
Delightful article. The author writes: "The much-esteemed writer Lu Xun was more subtly damning, commenting that it was always better for Chinese to write about China." When did Lu say this? What is the source in which the comment was found? Sincerely, Richard Kuslan, Editor Asia Business Intelligence www.asiabizblog.com
Posted by: Richard Kuslan | 7/7/06
Lu Xun quote - reply
Lu Xun made the comment in one of his letters to a Japanese friend dated November 15, 1933: "It is always better for the Chinese to write about Chinese subject matters, as that is the only way to get near the truth. It is no exception even with someone like Mrs. Buck who was warmly welcomed in Shanghai, and who regards China as her own motherland. What her books reveal after all is no more than her stand as an American woman missionary who happens to have grown up in China. … what she knows about China is superficial. Only when we Chinese come and do it, can we expect some truth be revealed." The English translation is mine based on a direct quote from an article by Yao Xuepeia, a well-known Lu Xun scholar. The article is titled:“What Pearl S. Buck Said About Lu Xun” and appears in "Lu Xun Studies Monthly," June, 1990.
Posted by: LIU Haiping | 7/10/06
Lu Xun quote - source
The letter (dated Nov. 15, 1933) in which this quote appears is published as "Zhi Yao Ke" (To Yao Ke), letter #331115.2 in _Lu Xun quanji_ (The Collected Works of Lu Xun), Vol. 12, Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1981, pp. 272-273.
Posted by: Catherine Lynch | 7/12/06
Pearl Buck Meant a Lot to Me
I was happy to read this thorough report on Pearl Buck's revival as her writing played a huge role in my life and career. As a young boy, I was fascinated with Asia. Pearl Buck was one of the mainstays of my interest, along with reading books in the school library about Marco Polo and Commodore Perry and the Opening of Japan and the wonderful "China Smith" TV show of the 50s. I read several of Pearl Buck's novels and much to my delight, when I took the college English test to get into UCLA, one of the optional questions was "Write about a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist." I had no trouble writing about Pearl Buck. This led, eventually to my entering the US Foreign Service. Though I was ultimately to spend most of my career in Latin America, my first assignment was in wartime Vietnam, where I worked in the hamlets and villages of rural provinces as a pacification advisor. Pearl Buck's novels prepared me well for that assignment. Only recently I reviewedon DVD the film version of "The Good Earth," and loved every minute of it.
Posted by: Dan Strasser | 8/31/06
Pearl Buck
One of my first literature assignments was reading "The Good Earth". The first woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature!
Posted by: Aprilaire | 1/7/11
What about
The subject is sounding interesting to me, for I know the name of Pearl S. Buck well though never read a complete book of her. The difficulty - for I didn't came to read her books as a child - to me, is indeed something going along with Lu Xuns (who I red intensively, especially several times "The true Story of Ah Q") argument. Often I read some lines of her I started to wonder whether this is authentical or not what I'm reading about. So, now I question myself, whether this article (I'm not able to view it completely now) can bring some more information causing the opinion of Pearl S. Buck is really an author worth to read, when interesting in Chinese Mind and thinking. How, can I express better, I don't know. May be someones find it worth to answer anything.
Posted by: Johnny Rotten | 6/19/11