East Wind: West Wind Book

A few years ago my brother and I took a road trip to Hillsboro, West Virginia to see Pearl S. Buck's childhood home. I had read A Good Earth and had loved it, and I thoroughly enjoy going to author's homes. When we got back home there was a message from my boss at the time on my answering machine asking why I wasn't at work that day. Somehow I had read the schedule wrong and my brother and I took our trip on a day I was actually scheduled to work. For the first (and only) time to date I received a written warning. It was not one of my shining moments, and for a long time I had a sort of thing against Pearl Buck, like maybe she was bad luck.

In any case, I no longer work at that bookstore and life all around is much better for me - I have a set schedule - so I can no longer blame Pearl Buck for my inadequacies.

I chose East Wind: West Wind for my return to Buck's writing as it was her first published novel in 1930 and seemed a fitting place to start again. I no longer hold anything against her. I really enjoyed this book. What intrigues me most about Buck is that the time she lived in China, despite being American by birth, she was accepted as a Chinese writer. She had the opportunity to live in and view Chinese culture as a Westerner, which is evident in her writing, particularly in East Wind: West Wind.

Kwei-lan is married to a Chinese man who was a doctor in America for a time. During his American stay he accepted several Western beliefs and attitudes, all of which are not accepted by Eastern standards. Kwei-lan is encouraged to unbind her feet, their son is to be raised solely by the two of them; she struggles to understand these Western beliefs without turning her back entirely on what she was raised to believe. Her older brother goes so far as to marry an American woman and returns as a relatively Westernized man. Kwei-lan makes every effort to help her parents come to terms with the changes occurring in their family while also embracing her new sister-in-law.

Written 22 years before Amy Tan was even born, Pearl S. Buck's books are much less commercialized and sadly are mostly ignored by readers now.