Features papers from the Pearl S. Buck Living Gateway Conference, held on the WVU campus in Morgantown, West Virginia, September 11-13, 2016. Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents:
Introduction / Jay Cole and John Haddad -- Pearl Buck, Raphael Lemkin, and the struggle for the genocide convention / David M. Crowe -- Pearl Buck and the evolution of American foreign policy : reflections and speculations of her film biographer / Donn Rogosin -- Pearl Buck's strategic vision : decolonization, desegregation, and Second World War imperatives / Charles Kupfer -- Chinese culture "going global" : Pearl S. Buck's methodological inspiration / Junwei Yao -- Pearl S. Buck's Promising Legacy in South Korea : the Pearl S. Buck Foundation and the rise of Korean multiculturalism / T.J. Park -- "Always in love with great ends" : Pearl S. Buck on Sun Yat-Sen and his nationalist revolution / David Gordon -- China's recent realization : the real peasant life portrayed by Pearl S. Buck / Kang Liao -- Gateways into The good earth : myth, archetype, and symbol in Pearl S. Buck's classic novel / Carol Breslin -- "Not having to be alone is happiness" : the Cal Price writing workshops at the Pearl Buck birthplace as catalysts for a glocal writing community / Rob Merritt.
Summary:
"How well do we really know Pearl S. Buck? Many think of Buck solely as the Nobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Good Earth, the novel that explained China to Americans in the 1930s. But Buck was more than a novelist and interpreter of China. As the essays in Beyond The Good Earth show, she possessed other passions and projects, some of which are just now coming into focus. Who knew, for example, that Buck imagined and helped define multiculturalism long before it became a widely known concept? Or that she founded an adoption agency to locate homes for biracial children from Asia? Indeed, few are aware that she advocated successfully for a genocide convention after World War II and was ahead of her time in envisioning a place for human rights in American foreign policy. Buck's literature, often dismissed as simple portrayals of Chinese life, carried a surprising degree of innovation as she experimented with the styles and strategies of Modernist artists. In Beyond The Good Earth, scholars and writers from the United States and China explore these and other often overlooked topics from the life of Pearl S. Buck, positioning her career in the context of recent scholarship on transnational humanitarian activism, women's rights, and civil rights activism"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.