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Pearl S. Buck
1892–1973
Born Hillsboro, West Virginia
The American novelist Pearl S. Buck once said, "Nothing and no one can destroy the Chinese people. They are relentless survivors." For more than thirty years, she lived in China, first in the city of Zhenjiang with her missionary parents and later in Nanjing with her husband, who was also a missionary. Her experiences there greatly influenced her writing. In 1932, Buck (known as Sai Zhenzhu in China) won the Pulitzer Prize for her second novel, The Good Earth. She then went on to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1938 after writing two books about the lives of her parents: The Exile and Fighting Angel (both 1936).
Buck posed for this portrait in 1932, just before her break with the Presbyterian missionary groups in China. In a speech she made around this time, she welcomed the Chinese to share her Christian faith without interference from well-intentioned, yet culturally and historically uninformed, missionaries.
Edward Steichen (1879–1973)
Gelatin silver print, 1932 |