Pearl Buck in China: Journey to The Good Earth Book

Spurling's bio showed me a side of Pearl Buck I never knew. She was a survivor who made art out of the trauma she witnessed, not for the sake of art, but to bring attention to the plight of China's poor. She pulled no punches, particularly where missionary activity was concerned ("Sincerity isn't enough," she once said), but she also used her writing and her activism to avoid facing the tragedies in her own life.

She achieved a great deal, personally (Pulitzer, Nobel) and politically -- repeal of Chinese Exclusion Acts, raising huge sums to assist with relief efforts, establishing an organization after the war to take care of unwanted minority and mixed-race children, mostly Amerasians (she coined the word), the tens of thousands of American babies fathered by American servicemen with Asian women in Japan, and later in Korea. I came away with great admiration for Buck, and yet by the end it seemed that the past had caught up with her. She ended her days in self-imposed exile, preferring the company of characters she had created on paper to her own children. "No one really got close to her," said her daughter Janice. "I never really got to know her."