Happy Birthday Pearl S. Buck
Pearl S. Buck was born Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker, on June 26th 1892 in Hillsboro, West Virginia. The daughter of missionaries, she began life in China when she was three months old, where she spent the majority of her first forty years.
Buck has written over seventy books, including biographies, poetry, short stories, plays, children’s books and translations. She was active in the U.S. Civil Rights movement and was also a strong advocate for children’s welfare. She brought comfort to many when she founded the first international interracial adoption agency “The Welcome House” in 1949.
Ms. Buck was the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in literature (1938). She also won the Pulitzer Prize in 1931 and 1932 for her second book The Good Earth. According to biographer Peter Conn (Cambridge, 1996), she even has an FBI file, courtesy of Hoover, said to be over 300 pages long - a curious reminder of where empathy and activism can sometimes lead.
Pearl S. Buck died in 1973. Both new and used books by Buck are prized, as her reputation as one of the most popular novelists of the twentieth century regains its rightful place in the cultural landscape.
She would have been 116 today!
