Ahead of Publication / Just Accepted

In 1934, Itaru Nii, the translator of the Japanese edition of The Good Earth (1935; 大地 =  Daichi ), published an article about Pearl S. Buck, “Literature and Literature of Correspondence: Visiting Nanjing,” in a Japanese newspaper, Asahi Shimbun (Nii 1934, 9). Her novel became a bestseller, which prompted Nii to go to Nanjing “to speak with Pearl Buck, the author of The Good Earth. ” However, when he went to Nanjing, he found that Buck had returned to the United States on vacation. He was told this by Mr. McDaniel of the Nanjing correspondent of The New York Times (Nii 1934, 9). Since Nii could not meet Buck, he had to go back to Shanghai, where he recently arrived from Japan, and searched for Buck’s works in bookstores. Then he found “a truly staggering number of books on display, including The Good Earth , which had been the number one bestseller in the United States in previous years, as well as The Mother , The First Wife , The Young Revolutionist , and so on” (Nii 1934, 9). Nii’s article provided a great deal of information about Pearl Buck for Japanese readers who knew nothing about her. He wrote that she was an American female writer who lived in China. He added that there were also many copies of Buck’s works in Shanghai, including The Good Earth , which was a number one bestseller in the United States. Globally, it appealed to readers who wanted to learn more about China. The Japanese were particularly interested in stories about the lives of Chinese farmers. Stories about Buck, her life, and her works continue to appear in the Japanese press, and by the end of 2022, Japan’s three major newspapers had published 568 articles on Buck. This ongoing interest in Buck is not only due to her literary works, such as The Good Earth , but also to her involvement in significant activities in Japan during the last 20 years of her life. This article traces the history of how Buck became a Japan expert in her later years, through her interactions with Japanese people and her social activities after the WWII. Buck came to Japan in 1960 after the war, but before that, many Japanese people had read books and articles about her in newspapers and magazines, and many had written letters to her, establishing exchanges with her across the Pacific Ocean.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, new cracks have formed in America’s already strained systems of care—including childcare, eldercare, and care for disabled individuals—with the additional physical, emotional, and financial burden falling disproportionately on women. This moment has precipitated new works of media and literature that represent the caregiver experience with dignity, honesty, and nuance. However, we can also find accurate and poignant descriptions of caregivers in existing works of fiction and nonfiction, as exemplified by the works of Pearl S. Buck. While the Pulitzer prize–winning author has long been praised and remembered as a champion of child welfare, I will argue that her writings hold just as much relevance today for their depictions of the women providing the childcare. I will explore several portrayals of caregivers in Pearl S. Buck’s novels, including The Mother , The Good Earth , and Pavilion of Women , contextualizing them within her own experience as a mother and caregiver. In so doing, I will place caregiving at the center of Buck’s enduring literary and humanitarian legacy.

Author and humanitarian Pearl S. Buck’s early support of the American civil rights movement is among the most important parts of her legacy. Buck took a public stand against racism shortly before her return to the United States in the mid-1930s. With the publication The Good Earth , she would become a bestselling writer at the age of 40. Buck, along with Eleanor Roosevelt, became two of the biggest white supporters of the civil rights movement through the 1930s and 1940s. Buck became associated with the National Urban League, and then later the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as she supported equal rights for Black citizens. Her statements made headlines in newspapers frequently during that era. In The New York Times in November 1941 she challenged Americans to reconsider their Constitution to include all Black people as equals or to officially deny them full civil rights. At her June 5, 1942 address at Howard University, Buck called for balancing patriotism with equality. In 1951, Buck’s last widely publicized stand against race prejudice was her role in a controversy about school segregation in Washington, D.C., which she opposed in a national media controversy.

This paper focuses on Pearl S. Buck’s writings on disability and their impact on breaking the taboo on disabilities and advocating a more humane and supportive societal response towards the disabled. Through Pearl Buck’s compassionate portrayals of characters facing mental or physical impairment, Pearl Buck served as a heralding voice for the rights of persons with disabilities. This paper not only analyzes a host of Pearl Buck’s works in which the exploration of disability is a theme but also dissects how her publications and her advocacy influenced societal awareness of disability. Pearl Buck’s most significant work on disability is The Child Who Never Grew . This child refers to Buck’s daughter, Carol, who was born with a metabolic disorder called phenylketonuria (PKU). Left without medical intervention, the bloodstream of children with PKU accumulates elevated levels of phenylalanine, leading to permanent cognitive impairment. Buck struggled tremendously over what was best for Carol’s care. Eventually, when Carol was nine, Buck admitted her to the Training School at Vineland, New Jersey. In 1932, Buck donated $50,000 to Vineland for the construction and running of Carol’s Cottage (Trent, 1994, 233). Buck also served on Vineland’s board of directors for decades. The publication of The Child Who Never Grew finally pushed the U.S. to break the silence on mental disability and drew public attention to this stigmatized topic. The publication of this memoir also signifies Buck’s public commencement as an advocate for the mentally disabled. Through multifaceted venues such as publications, support of parents advocacy groups, and placement of disabled children through the adoption agency that she founded, Buck affirmed the values of the mentally disabled to both their families and the society in general and demanded care and support for the disabled at familial, institutional, and societal levels.

Pearl S. Buck’s extensive life experience in China provided her with invaluable intellectual resources, guiding her to transcend the limitations of race, ethnicity, and nationality in addressing the issue of women’s liberation. The “bifocal perspective” she employed, along with her flexible application of the concepts of “seeking common ground while preserving differences” and “holistic thinking” demonstrate the profound influence of Chinese wisdom on her feminist thought. Buck integrated gender, racial, and ethnic liberation within a unified framework, examining both the structural similarities and the varying internal needs of each. Buck broadened the scope of women’s liberation, bringing women of color and Asian women to the forefront of the movement, advocating for the analysis of women’s issues within the complex web of social relations, thereby demonstrating the inclusiveness and forward-looking nature of her thought. Furthermore, she keenly recognized the strength of Chinese women, promoting the Chinese model of women’s emancipation. This stance subverted the traditional hierarchical relationship between East and West, reflecting a critical internationalist consciousness in her thinking.

The study of Pearl S. Buck in China has been ongoing for more than six decades since the 1960s. It has traversed 5 phases of development: the initial stage in the 1960s, the rising stage of development, the period of stagnation, the period of significant rebound, and the 21st-century period of significant resurgence. An analysis of the textual media, core research themes, and cultural dissemination demonstrates a wealth of academic achievements in the studies of Pearl S. Buck in China. The studies have a characteristic of a diverse array of textual media and an integration of research themes, resulting in a multifaceted, multi-dimensional and multi-perspective research paradigm for Pearl S. Buck researchers across various disciplinary domains. By doing this, it not only disseminates the cultural legacy of Pearl S. Buck but also brings brand-new research topics to the Chinese Pearl S. Buck research community.

Novelist and social commentator Pearl S. Buck, best known for her writings on Asia, called, in an important 1937 article entitled “On Discovering America,” for Americans to be more open to immigrants and envisioned a future post-racial United States, created through the amalgamation of the best ideas from the world’s cultures. This essay examines Buck’s 1937 article on immigration, and uses it as a baseline to consider as well several of Buck’s novels (from 1930 to the early 1950s) which include themes of immigration, multi-racial sexual relations, and mixed-race children.