Pearl S. Buck

(1892 - 1973)

Born to Southern Presbyterian missionaries in West Virginia, Pearl S. Buck was raised in China, where she lived for most of her first forty years. She penned her debut novel, East Wind: West Wind, aboard a ship bound for the United States. Her second novel, The Good Earth, which she based on experiences living in rural Anhui province with her husband, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. Buck was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1938. In 1954 she published her autobiography, which she insisted was not in fact autobiographical. “An autobiography is written from within,” she said, “and I’ve always been much more interested in what was happening around me.”