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Pearl S. Buck (1892)close

Pearl Buck was born Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker in Hillsboro, Arkansas, the daughter of Southern Presbyterian missionaries who spent most of their lives in China. Pearl was born while her parents were on a furlough in the U.S., but returned to China when she was only 3 months old. She enrolled in Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Virginia, and returned to China after graduation where she met John Lossing Buck, an American agricultural economist. Pearl and her husband both took teaching positions at Nanking University. In the 1920s, Pearl began to publish stories and essays, and her first novel East Wind, West Wind, was published in 1930. Her second book, The Good Earth won a Pulitzer Prize, was a best selling book of both 1931 and 1932, and was adapted as a major film in 1937. By 1938, Buck had won the Nobel Prize in literature, the first American woman to do so.

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This page presents short biographies of more than 200 famous Americans drawn from our unit, "The 50 States." These personalities are arranged by theme.

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