"The secret of joy is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it."
Pearl S. Buck is not exactly a household name. Chances are however, that at some point in your life, you were reading the dust jacket on a book and saw that it was recipient of the Pearl S. Buck Award. This prestigious honor is given to female American authors whose work reflects the same principles for whom the award is named. But who exactly was she?
She was born Pearl Comfort Sydenstriker in Hillsboro, West Virginia on June 26, 1892. She was the daughter of American missionaries, who took her to China when she was just four months old. She'd spend her formative years abroad, even learning to speak Chinese before English. Then in 1911, she returned to the States and settled in Lynchburg, Virginia, where she enrolled in Randolph-Macon Woman's College. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa just three years later.
Upon graduation, she returned to China where she married fellow missionary John Lossing Buck. They'd settle in the Suzhou, Anhui Province, which would serve as the inspiration for her most famous work, The Good Earth, first published in 1931. This influential novel won Buck the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1932, and later, the Nobel Prize for Literature. It is today considered an American literary classic.
Buck died of lung cancer on March 6, 1973. She was 80 years old. She was interred on the grounds of Pearl S. Buck International, a non-profit organization founded in 1964 in Perkasie, Pennsylvania. It's mission is to "bridge cultures and change lives through humanitarian aid and intercultural education."
Rest in peace.
Trivia
- If you want to learn more about Pearl S. Buck, take a voyage to Amazon. It's all in books.
- Winners of the Pearl S. Buck Award receive a medallion and a $25,000 prize.
- Randolph-Macon Woman's College is today known simply as Randolph College.
- In 1973, the National Women's Hall of Fame opened in Seneca Falls, New York. Buck was the first inductee.
