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    Pearl S. Buck article in Vogue magazine from June, 1972. Pearl Sydenstricker Buck (June 26, 1892 – March 6, 1973), also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu (Chinese: 賽珍珠), was an American writer and novelist. As the daughter of missionaries, Buck spent most of her life before 1934 in China. Her novel The Good Earth was the best-selling fiction book in the United States in 1931 and 1932 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. In 1938, she was 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 the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

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    Pearl S. Buck article in Vogue magazine from June, 1972. Pearl Sydenstricker Buck (June 26, 1892 – March 6, 1973), also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu (Chinese: 賽珍珠), was an American writer and novelist. As the daughter of missionaries, Buck spent most of her life before 1934 in China. Her novel The Good Earth was the best-selling fiction book in the United States in 1931 and 1932 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. In 1938, she was 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 the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

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    4 views3 pages

    Pearl S. Buck Vogue Jun-1972

    Uploaded by

    brianhamilton
    Pearl S. Buck article in Vogue magazine from June, 1972. Pearl Sydenstricker Buck (June 26, 1892 – March 6, 1973), also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu (Chinese: 賽珍珠), was an American writer and novelist. As the daughter of missionaries, Buck spent most of her life before 1934 in China. Her novel The Good Earth was the best-selling fiction book in the United States in 1931 and 1932 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. In 1938, she was 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 the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

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    WHAT I LEARNED FROM CHINESE WOMEN PEARL S. BUCK talks “American women still want to escape from the inevitable freedom that comes from using their heads. Chinese women are independent because they haven't been coddled.” Peal 8, Bi extraordinary, courageous woman, the 1g American Nobel Prize winner for Literature, bridges eiviiza- tions and generations, searching for the reconciliations between ideas and peoples that have eluded the world in her lifetime. The daughter of scholar- ly Presbyterian missionaries, once a missionary herself, she is the author of novel, The Good Earth, 1931, that revealed perhaps for the first time the piety and spirit of the earth’s poor. Beyond her books—there are more than eighty written ina poeti, almost Biblical style that maddens literary erties Pearl S. Buck has had a series of confrontations with wrongheadedness jons of American poliey in the Far East; she was one of the first women to admit that her only child, a daugh ter, sas mentally retarded and to fight for the education of parents of other ‘mentally retarded children and for more enlightened medic slong Defore World War Il, she attacked the mounting waves of racial hatred that have swept through the twentieth century; and, with the Peat! 8. Buck Foundation, started in 1964, she has sought to aid the orphans fathered by American G.1.'s in Asia~almost one child for every ten G's. Her own nine adopted children form a sort of mini-U.N,~"mysteriously lacking,” Pearl Buck said, “a Chinese.” Now, Pearl Buck lives most of the year in Danby, Vermont, writing in longhand with a Chinese brush, practicing French on ‘tape recorder, and taking long walks along the country roads in her char- ‘acteristic heavy silk robes in the Chinese style. Danby is her latest and per- haps her most surprising projectthe reclamation of a dying town that started with the purchase of the old general store and a refurbishment of the Main Street. Pearl Buck looks steadily East, but her feet are planted ‘on firm Yankee sol right, at eighty, only liv and bigotry: She saw early on the limit a girl and narkably different from that of other women of your gen- mused you to aecept hardship, revolution, and famine with such tnustal calm? PEARL S. BUCK: I was afraid, often afraid; but it never occurred to re that my circumstances were any different because I was a woman. But Lihink I gained a certain amount of my calm from my mother who was th most resolute of women-the wife of a missionary, a missionary herself Before I was bor, my mother, alone with two small children and QUESTION: Your experience-the long years in China a eration. Wha Chinese nse, went far up into the interior to escape the summer heat. Th a drought, incl soon it was blamed on the foreigner in the city. One after noon, the Chinese nurse came to my mother to say that a mob was coming, tokill her and the children, This was long before the telephone or telegraph andl @ runner could hardly reach my father in time. My mother prepared tea and cakes and threw open the gates. When the mob came, she was sitting there with the baby in her lap. I see her in me. @¢ You feel that American women could learn from Chinese women? American women don’t seem to want to take responsibil d yy for their Drains. In spite of the great movernent toward liberation, American women still want to escape from the inevitable freedom that comes from using, their heads. Quite frankly, because I've done both, I know it’s easier to be in the home, It’s a tremendous burden to take public office, to organize social Ife. In the new China, women hi fe organized themselves very 136 powerfully. But women here haven't leamed the possibilities of orguntz tion, For American women, marriage is often the only goal, And to atta ‘marriage, the growing need for popularity—the eleven-year-olds who a ready begin to think about boyfriends. For my mother, marriage wasn necessary, “You're the important person,” she said, As a consequence, m sister and I paid little attention to mariage. We were too eager to fin ‘ourselves. Nature doesn't distinguish between men and women aboy where the brains are to be found. And chances are that at east 50 perce of the brains in the world belong to women. jot the vote before American womer {Chinese women ate self-sufficient because they were never coddled, In t ‘old China, marriages were arranged and the men got all the privilege They knew they must be responsible for themselves and the others. The developed a great independence under a very calm surface. Perhaps, the American women T've known, Mrs, Roosevelt was the most like t Chinese woman, She had a deep sense of honor, a larger sense of fami personal unhappiness, she found a way to make the be of her fe and the lives of those around her, always facing what ean resolutely @z You don't feel American wom selves? ‘Az American women are apt to belittle other women. T've often heat In spite of I i. gaining a larger sense of ther ‘American women say they wouldn't go to a woman doctor or lawyer: ly value themselves wi )=Thaven’t time—but Ido think Wor eater pride in themselves, There a many things that still puzzle me about the relations between men a ‘women in our society. Why do American men seem to have a better tin so much admite ‘women don't value one another, they will h ‘men. [don't helong to Women's en's Lib will help women to without women? And why is their escape fom wome! the source of such gr think so little of the ‘ean women have to leam not to be say, all the time, that you're not inferior, then the suspicion cannot he Dut grow that you are indeed inferior, In China, women have always h a lot of power. Their selfhood was understood. Qe What about the raising of your own family, your daughters, in Amerie Az I had seven daughters and had to be very elear with them about # ‘American assumption that the relationship between men and women based on sex. It isn't. [told them that anything that happens is your fan ‘One daughter when T made my speech burst into tea she said to me, “Of course not,” T answered. My eldest son once broug hhome his date for a moonlight pienie. The gitl was dressed in ald nothing. [culled her mother up and said 1 wasr’t responsible for auythi my son might do, Her mother answered, “But Kate's a good girl” “I not so sure of my son,” I replied. I think we're much too sentimental about the (Continued on page 14 Pearl S.Buckat eight nusement? But that is perhaps because wom ves and accept their segregation too easily. Ame il oF feel inferior. If you have “That's not fat VOGUE; Jone, 1908 (NE “It never occurred tome Twas any different because Twas a woman” RRA YI FASE NIRS) A PEARL BUCK ‘Continaed from pase 136) role of women, It’s the woman's Ipasiness to protect herself. But 1 find that some American gi even tell men they are pregnant to get them to marry them, More fof that stupid marriage-success bbasiness. I've been married twice sand had many children, but I've never felt that marriage was all could expect as a woman, But two times is enough. . . . Once, you can make a mistake but not twice, My first husband [John Lossing Buck, also a missionary, whom Pearl Buck divorced 1934 but whose name she tained for her work even after her second marriage to Richard Walsh, a publisher] was a won: derful man; but we had nothing in common, no intellectual inter- ets He deserved so much better companionship. After we were divorced, much later, T discov- ered that he had then been mar- ried happily to a Chinese. His happiness helped to wipe out my stupiel mistake. @z How did you become a writer? (Az I suppose T always knew 1 ‘vould be a writer. But the choice ‘as a somewhat complicated one Decause of my family. Mother ‘was a: musician, and even in the heart of China we had a piano and an organ. Music was also a temptation, but then I would have wanted to be a composer. T was never content with small measures. [loved sculpture, be- case it aceupies both hand and brain, I had won prizes for my swriting in college, but I waited tobegin, When I was graduated, Thad a revelation, the sort of revelation that can only come as a result of a good edu Knew I knew nothing. 1 brilliant teachers; no ide crossed the threshold of ‘mind. College opened the door to learning. @z And you went back to China? Az I went back to China, [had ‘made up my mind not to write anything until I Tearned. I didn’t write for ten years. I had many Chinese friends—all the young intellectuals. When I was young: cr, a gitl, we had lived in Chin- kiang, an ancient city at the junction of the Grand Canal and the Yangtze River. We lived on a hill outside the city in a house surrounded by fields, (Mj mothe v7 er did't like the noise and tum: ble of the city.) ‘There, 1 had played with farmers’ children. When I came back to China, my life was not with peasants’ but the people who were trying to create a new country, Goethe was very popular with them. “Here you are writing copies of Western novels and poetry. Why hot write about your own peo: pple?” I asked them, “Who wants to hear about peasants,” they answered. That sparked me. @z You beyan to write? ‘Az In 1930, I published my frst book, East Wind: West Wind. As ‘a child, I eame to know the Chi nese peasant very well. The Good Earth came from those e periences. The Chinese peasant, strong and kind in spite of his literacy, revered learning so much that if he found a serap of paper with writing on i he bumed it in the nearest temple as an offering, Mao Tse-tung is the son of a well-to-do peasant, and it is perhaps the peasant’s love of learning that made him have the intellectual elite live among the peasants @z How do you feel toward the new China? Az I couldo't live there, But we must give them full eredit for what has been accomplished. China is stronger than Comes nism, She will make out of it what she wants @: Have Wester influences been absorbed in the same way? Az Very few Americans have tried to understand China, When [was young, the missionaries ‘were very good people, but they ‘were the wrong people to send to a country that so deeply re: vered learning. Our religion is also very divisive, The Chinese hhad accepted Buddhisin, Con- fucianism, and Taoism without ‘considering them contradictory Christianity could have been added. But our missionaries didn't just distinguish between Protestantism and Catholicism, ‘They said you couldn't be a Methodist and Presbyterian at the same time. The Chinese didn’t understand, My father ind mother never tauight that Christianity was the only relig- fon. In faet, ane of the books my father wrote was about Bud:

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