PEARL S BUCK, THE PHILANTHROPIST WRITER, NOVELIST.

PEARL S BUCK, THE PHILANTHROPIST WRITER, NOVELIST.

A vast majority of voluntary groups and organizations are laboring for some cause or the other so as to change the social fabric of society for a better living. Amongst them are writers, novelists, philosophers and politicians besides some who remain incognito while serving people. Some are born to write, a few to philosophise, and or do social work, others work for a specific cause they consider most relevant. The American born Pearl Buck who lived most part of her youth in China in pre- and post communist, posr-war revolution periods did combine both humanitarian and literary functions in herself- a rare phenomenon that we come across. The missions she established for protection of civil rights for men and women besides orphans are meting her aspirations even today. She turned over most of her earnings—more than $7 million. Welcome House and Opportunity House merged in 1991 to form Pearl S. Buck International, headquartered on Buck’s estate, Green Hills Farm in Pennsylvania, which is a national historic landmark. Annie Besant taught Indians how to become self dependant by fighting slavery and thereby earning self-respect. Pearl Buck did the same when she saw violence and tyranny of both the monorchy and communist regimes that had taken over and for this reason she was not permitted to return to China at a later stage of her life. Most of her novels, short stories and lectures reflect both the pathetic conditions of the people who had no employment nor a means of earning a decent livelyhood. Both the monorchy and the revolutionary governments were oppressive and did more harm and damage than trying to give an honorable means of living. Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker Buck was born on June 26, 1892, in Hillsboro, West Virginia, US. as the child of a parentage fully committed to Presbyterian missionary service. As a five month baby, her parents left to China, settling in a rural place called Chinkiang. Initially tutored by a Chinese privately and later at the age of nine in a school at Shanghai. She left to Virginia at the age of seventeen for a batchelor’s degree in psychology. Much later, though was offered a professor’ assignment , she returned to China to look after her ailing mother. She met and married an agricultural economist John Lossing Buck in 1917, moving to another rural place Nanhsuchou where she was exposed to the object poverty and oppressive atmosphere in which Chinese farmers lived. This helped her reflect the Chinese life as she saw in her books and writings. In the meanwhile, her first issue was an retarded child, another adopted did not survive long and twenty years of unhappy marriage to Buck ended around 1935. Her first novel, East Wind, West Wind, was published by John Day Company in 1930. This novel is as told from the eyes of a traditional Chinese girl, Kwei-lan, married to a Chinese medical doctor, educated abroad. As she gets exposed to the western thought, she gradually changes her outmoded views through self-realisation to accept different points of view from the western world. Her second most famous and widely read even today and which won Pulitzer Prize is the Good Earth published in 1931. Here she describes famine and object poverty of the farmers and their miserable life unsupported by the administration. It took the world by surprise as to the conditions in China existing at that time. She even won the Nobel Prize for literature as the first American and the fourth woman in the world. She eventually got married to its publisher, Richard Walsh in 1935. Good Earth was made into a famous picture by the MGM Co. Her next famous novel was the Dragon Seed which tells about -Ling Tan and his family–simple farmers living in peaceful isolation. Western technology, and likewise the Japanese invasion of China and its’ occupation, were unknown in these outlying regions of China. Ling Tan and his neighbors had to accept the harsh realities of war as the rulers would fly away but farmers left high and dry to protect themselves. Days passed and it had happened again. Poor farmers killed and women atrociously devastated. So the story goes on. She wrote plenty more like the Pavilion of Women, where she describes life of the rich and the royal families, Imperial Women, A House Divided etc., Many of them –Dragon Seed, Guide(Remember Dev Anand’s Hindi film), Satan Never Sleeps, Pavilion of women, China Sky were made into successful movies. She died at the ripe age of eightytwo on 6th March 1973 at Danby, Vermont, USA, leaving behind a vast collection of writings on Chinese life- an history of sorts to preserve and her memory for posterity. ————————————————————————————————————.