Pearl Buck

American writer who moved to China as a child with her missionary parents. Her dad, Absalom Sydenstricker, dedicated himself to the cause of saving China's heathens. Lacking a sense of humor himself, he worried that his wife Carrie might be "morally frivolous" with her tendency to laughter. Carrie was lonely and lost in China where she buried four of her children, and became so embittered that she refused to see Absalom on her deathbed. Pearl saw her dad as a fanatic who belittled her work and worth, and her mom as a woman shackled by the deference demanded by her culture. She was also exposed to a Chinese disregard for women and various social horrors. Later, during the war with Japan, she witnessed numerous casualties and had to hide with other Americans when the Japanese plundered Nanking.

At 17, she traveled to Europe, England and the U.S. Growing up and living her life as a world citizen, she was at home everywhere and never fully belonged anywhere. Buck graduated from college in Virginia in 1914 and returned to China to do agricultural work and teach at the University of Peking.

In May 1917, she married Lossing Buck, an agricultural missionary stationed in China, an act which she later called "the worst blunder of her life." Three years later their daughter Carol was born with phenylketonuria, a disease that leads to retardation. For the next 20 years, Buck left out any reference to Carol in biographical material. In 1929, they left the nine-year-old girl at a private facility in New Jersey. To pay the $1,000 a year for her daughter's custodial care, Buck wrote "The Good Earth," which was published in 1931. The following year she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

Her husband complimented her nicely though he considered his own newly released book on Chinese agriculture to be more meaningful, and her dad refused to even read the book, saying that he did not have the time.