Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography

Three things are good about Peter Conn's Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography. The first is about the author, Conn, who holds the Andrea Mitchell Chair in English at the University of Pennsylvania. His writing style shows that he is an experienced scholar in English literature, history and culture. His language is beautiful, fluent and poetic, and it is a real delight to read his book.

Conn obviously admires Buck a lot -- his adopted daughter came from the Welcome House, an international agency Buck founded in 1949 to help the adoption of Asian and Amerasian children by families all over the world. But this personal connection never blinds Conn's calm and balanced eye that observes both the bright and dark sides of Buck as a troubled writer and an important figure in modern American and Chinese history. His in-depth research before and during the writing of this book truly shines through. His analysis of Buck's strength and weakness is fair and clear, and his narrating voice is like that of a dear old friend. The result is an academic work that is highly comprehensible and enjoyable.

The second good thing about this book is that it is a "cultural biography" -- in the same way that one cannot survive independently from any society, it is impossible to observe the life and work of a writer without understanding the social and cultural environments in which he or she has lived. Buck had spent her life both in Asia and in the United States, and the political, economic, social and cultural events that took place in these two worlds had absolutely important impacts in shaping Buck's views about human nature. To study Buck's life from a cultural point of view is to familiarize oneself with the cultural histories of Asia and the United States, and of Europe and Africa as well. One can even suggest that to know Buck is to know the world itself.

As a writer, Buck was amazingly productive. Having written more than 70 books in her life, she had worked in almost every genre of writing -- novels, short stories, plays, biography, autobiography, translations (from Chinese to English), children's literature, essays, journalism, and poetry. One of the most popular novelists of the 20th century, Buck successfully brought Asia into American life. Her representations of Asians, particularly those of Chinese women, are with such honesty and compassion that they became familiar names discussed daily in American households. In Conn's words: "Never before or since (13th-century Marco Polo) has one writer so personally shaped the imaginative terms in which America addresses a foreign culture. For two generations of Americans, Buck invented China."

As a cultural figure, Buck's achievements are even greater. Unlike almost every other American of her generation, Buck was born in China and grew up knowing that country as her actual, day-to-day world, while America was the place of conjecture and simplified images. Living in and loving both worlds, she promoted cross-cultural understanding not only between Asia and the United States, but also between different races, social classes and genders in both societies. She particularly devoted herself to the promotion of human rights, such as those of colored people, women, children and the disabled. She contributed all she could, and her positive influence over other important political figures such as Eleanor Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy further helped change the American society a great deal.

Finally, Conn argues in Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography that a piece of writing does not and should not have to be judged purely according to its literary merits. Popular arts such as Superman may tell us more about the American society during the times of the Great Depression than other great literary figures such as Hamlet. The fact that Buck was one of the most popular writers of the 20th century does not mean that she does not deserve to be considered as a great writer. This is why from Conn's book we have learned a good lesson -- writers are human beings, too, and other than one's literary values there are so many different ways of judging a human being.

Peter Conn's Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography was published by the Cambridge University Press in 1996.

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Copyright: Christine Sun, Taiwan.com.au Portal, 2005. All rights are reserved.