Pearl S. Buck was the “Link between China and America.” (Spurling, 109.) Her rich childhood, filled to the brim with inspiration, led her to a career writing books about her homeland of China to her fellow Americans. After large success, she also became an active member of the civil rights movement and also had her own adoption agency. Persevering through opposition from Christians and Communists alike, the Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winner Pearl S. Buck was one of the most influential women in United States history.
On June twenty-sixth, 1892, Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker was born to parents Absalom and Caroline Sydenstricker. She was born on a trip to the United States, which was a short break from Absalom’s missionary work in China. He had delayed the return trip in order to possibly save his daughter. The parents of Pearl were very conscious of their children’s health, as they had already had three children of theirs die in infancy. As soon as Caroline and Pearl Sydenstricker were well and rested enough to travel, the Sydenstrickers left for China on a treacherous voyage, first across the United States and then across the Pacific Ocean. In China, Pearl grew up with two parents, but her father was away so much doing missionary work where no white man had gone before, that her mother was almost like a single mother. During this time, her mother was in charge of the religion that happened in the house. The nightly prayers that were forced onto her children were often neglected. Pearl realized that God wasn’t real to her, so she stopped praying. Later in life, she would completely discontinue all religious beliefs, in hope it would bring a better social equality.
The other children who had died in infancy left a mark on...
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The history of The Black Civil Rights Movement in the United States is a fascinating account of a group of human beings, forcibly taken from their homeland, brought to a strange new continent, and forced to endure countless inhuman atrocities. Forced into a life of involuntary servitude to white slave owners, African Americans were to face an uphill battle for many years to come. Who would face that battle? To say the fight for black civil rights "was a grassroots movement of ordinary people who accomplished extraordinary things" would be an understatement. Countless people made it their life's work to see the progression of civil rights in America. People like W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, A Phillip Randolph, Eleanor Roosevelt, and many others contributed to the fight although it would take ordinary people as well to lead the way in the fight for civil rights. This paper will focus on two people whose intelligence and bravery influenced future generations of civil rights organizers and crusaders. Ida B.Wells and Mary Mcleod Bethune were two African American women whose tenacity and influence would define the term "ordinary to extraordinary".
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“Whenever she had to warn us about life, my mother told stories that ran like this one, a story to grow up on. She tested our strengths to establish realities”(5). In the book “The Woman Warrior,” Maxine Kingston is most interested in finding out about Chinese culture and history and relating them to her emerging American sense of self. One of the main ways she does so is listening to her mother’s talk-stories about the family’s Chinese past and applying them to her life.
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The Good Earth focuses around the life of a Chinese peasant, Wang Lung, who struggles to overcome a poverty-stricken life. The accounts of Wang Lung's life portray traditional China. One prominent aspect of this story is how women were depicted in society. The role of women in China is woven throughout the novel. Depending on their social status, each female character within the novel gives readers a different perspective of a woman's role during this period. In addition to their roles, the author includes the trials and tribulations these women must face as well. As a whole, the importance of these female characters are based upon their contribution to the ego's of the male protagonists and as being providers of support to both family and order in society. In Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth, women are depicted to be consistent with the authentic Chinese culture of that period.