Pearl Buck: The Bridge Builder
Humans fear and loathe that which they do not understand. This fact has been true for ages and still exists today. Fortunately, there are people such as Pearl Buck. People like her see the injustice in this simple fact and work to break down the walls of separation between other people. She took on the seemingly impossible task of building a “bridge” across the Pacific Ocean to China from America and broke down many walls through her writings, doing a great service to many.
Biographical Information
Pearl Sydenstricker Buck started her eventful life as Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker in Hillsboro, Virginia on June 26, 1892. Important events took place before this that made her birth even more special than a normal birth.
Theodore Harris says that Buck’s mother Carie married a man named Andrew Sydenstricker, a Presbyterian missionary in China. The couple had a daughter and raised her there. When the child was four years old, she and her mother contracted cholera. Only the mother survived (18).
Buck was born two years after this tragedy while the family was on hiatus from their mission work in China. When Buck was three months old, they returned to Chinkiang, China. According to Theodore Harris, Buck spent her whole childhood there with many Chinese influences. Wang Amah, a Chinese nurse, assisted her mother. She played with Chinese children and lived in a house along the Yangtze River (30-31). These influences later played an integral role in Buck’s success as a novelist.
The Encyclopedia Britannica Online says Buck’s early schooling was received in Shanghai. Later, she returned to the United States and graduated from Randolph-Macon Woman's College in the year 1914. After graduation, Buck went back to China and became a college professor in Nanking (1).
According to Dr. Bette Reagan, Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker married John Lossing Buck, also a missionary in China, and became known as Pearl Sydenstricker Buck. The ceremony took place in China in 1917. During their marriage, the couple had a daughter named Carol. While delivering the baby a uterine tumor was found in Buck, forcing her to have a hysterectomy. This left her with no possibility of bearing children again. To add to the pain of this blow, Buck later noticed that their only child was mentally retarded, suffering from a disease called PKU. The family decided to return to the United States to place Carol in a care facility in Vineland, New Jersey (1).
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I assume that Pearl grew up to be a beautiful woman. I believe she married a wonderful husband, was rue to him, and both made a good living. I think they lived in a nice home and were known by many other people. They both loved their life and lived it the best they could.
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(1)Born in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, on September 8, 1907. (2)”The Leonard family had a baby boy, Walter, to add to their bunch. Walter’s parents John and Emma Leonard had six children together. Three girls Fanny, Willa, and Lena: and three boys Herman, Charlie, and Walter.” Walter’s family was a very religious family, who usually always went to church. Even after walter’s retirement he went to church every Sunday. (3) The origin of Walter’s nickname “Buck” came from his younger brother Charlie.(4) Walter’s parents originally nicknamed him Buddy, but Charlie had trouble pronouncing Buddy and called him Bucky instead.
Betty Ford was born on April 8, 1918 in Chicago. She lived in Denver and
lived in the time of the American civil war and her mother was a slave
Jane Long, being the very loyal wife she was, followed Mr. Long and waited for him. She waited a very long time with little food and fuel. She even had to fight off indians. She fought off the indians by shooting cannons, making them believe there were soldiers still defending the area. She fed herself and her daughter by eating clams they found in the river and hunting with very little ammo. Eventually, she had another daughter. She was supposedly the first english speaking woman to give birth in Texas. Jane and her two daughters waited for a very long time for Mr. Long. Little did they know, Long was accidentally
in 1797 in Dutch settlement of Ulster County, New York. She was the youngest of thirteen
left China in 1944. Her mother was married to another man at the time and had two twin