Pearl S. Buck won the 1938 Nobel Prize in Literature for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces.
Buck was born Pearl Comfort Sydenstricker in 1892 in Hillsboro, West Virginia, and spent much of her childhood in China. That experience strongly shaped novels such as The Good Earth, published in 1931. The novel follows a Chinese farmer and his family through poverty, prosperity, famine, and social change.
The Nobel committee recognized Buck’s ability to make Chinese rural life accessible to international readers. She was the third woman to receive the Literature prize, after Selma Lagerlöf and Grazia Deledda. A common mix-up is confusing Buck with Chinese-born Nobel laureate Mo Yan, who won many decades later. Buck’s award was also notable because it honored a writer whose major literary subjects were outside her American birthplace.