MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Pearl Buck in her autobiography titled “My Several Worlds” writes about herself and her life, forty years in China and the rest of it in the United States. She traveled much to India and other places. What was in the back of the transition from one country to the accidental land of her birth? Can the question be answered about why she hardly ever refers to family members by name, was it for their anonymity or just to keep only herself at the center of the narrative, or some other reason? Impelled to write to support the farm and the family and the Welcome House projects going, do any of these things satisfy the reader who comes late in life to her writing? Ms Buck’s worlds were kept separate in such books as “The Townsman”, or earlier in “The Mother”, yet she seemed to have unity of purpose in all that she did. She was not afraid to write about revolution. She campaigned for Civil Rights. She took on the traditional view of favoritism for intellectuals in China. How her life changed when her husband had a stroke! The conversation of two bright intellectually minded people disappeared because of his stroke. Include the entertaining stories at Green Hills Farm. The little pig, the runt of the litter and at the beginning of her biography of her father’s story of a neighbor calling her father when he was a young child the runt of the litter. Some of these questions can be researched, others speculated about, and still others left to the foggy dawn of history. The challenge is to get through all of her writings by collaborating with others who are also interested in the quest. It would need more than one lifetime but one must begin somewhere.