For Pearl S. Buck, writing wasn’t just something she was going to try: it was her path to independence. Today’s poem, a sonnet.
The date is June 26th, Wednesday, and today I’m coming to you from La Serena, Chile.
Today is the birthday of Pearl S. Buck, American writer. Her most famous work is certainly her novel The Good Earth, though she would write over 85 combined novels, short stories, and essays during her career. The Good Earth was the best-selling fiction book in America for 1931 and 1932 and Pearl was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 for it.
Pearl was born to Christian missionary parents in 1892. That same year, the family traveled to China. Growing up, Pearl played with the Chinese children, received schooling from a local Confucian scholar, and learned both English and Chinese.
During the Boxer Rebellion, which we covered in last Friday’s episode, Pearl, her siblings and mother retreated to Shanghai for cover. While there, eight-year-old Pearl was among other white children for the first time. She quickly found that none of them spoke the native Chinese language. On top of that, she was shocked to find they maintained racist sentiments. In Pearl’s sheltered life in a Chinese village, it was she who was always the outsider with her blonde hair and blue eyes.
Pearl would not visit for the United States until age 19 when she left to attend college in Virginia. Pearl had a grand time and wasn’t planning on returning after graduation. However, when her father sent word that her mother had fallen ill, Pearl applied to the Presbyterian Board for help and was able to travel back to China to be with her mother.
Almost as soon as Pearl had returned to China in 1914, she met and fell in love with her first husband John Buck, a fellow Presbyterian Missionary. They married and lived together as teachers at the University of Nanking.
The Bucks and Pearl’s father were living together when the Nanking incident occurred in 1927. It was a confused scuffle for power between three groups and the lives of Christian missionary were once again in jeopardy. When violence was imminent, a Chinese family offered to help the family, and invited them to their hut. However, it was all a ruse, and the Bucks’ home was ransacked while they were gone. Under threat of violence, they fled and were rescued after a day of hiding by an American gunboat.
Perhaps spurred on by a near-death experience, Pearl buckled down on her desire to become a writer. Stuck in a now unhappy marriage, Pearl was determined to write her way out of the marriage and into some steady income. Every morning she would secure herself away in the attic and just write. Within the year she had a complete manuscript for The Good Earth.
After the successful publication, Pearl Buck had all the money she needed to leave her husband. But first, she gifted the construction of a bathhouse in Nanking for the townswomen and set up a trust fund for her daughter Carol who had a developmental disability.
She left China in 1934. She tried on many occasions to return to her beloved China, but each time she was denied, the political climate making it impossible.
She received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938 for her entire body of work, and was the first American woman to receive the award. Pearl Buck’s parent’s first home in Hillsboro, West Virginia is now a museum to preserve the legacy, work, and private papers of Pearl S. Buck.
Sonnet IV [I shall forget you presently, my dear]
Edna St. Vincent Millay
I shall forget you presently, my dear,
So make the most of this, your little day,
Your little month, your little half a year
Ere I forget, or die, or move away,
And we are done forever; by and by
I shall forget you, as I said, but now,
If you entreat me with your loveliest lie
I will protest you with my favorite vow.
I would indeed that love were longer-lived,
And vows were not so brittle as they are,
But so it is, and nature has contrived
To struggle on without a break thus far,—
Whether or not we find what we are seeking
Is idle, biologically speaking.