Pearl Sydenstricker Buck (June 26, 1892 – March 6, 1973; also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu; Chinese: 賽珍珠) was an American writer and novelist. As the daughter of missionaries, Buck spent most of her life before 1934 in Zhenjiang, China. Her novel The Good Earth was the best-selling fiction book in the United States in 1931 and 1932 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. In 1938, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces". She was the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.
And also one of only fourteen women to win the prize.
My copy of The Good Earth is an old 1970s paperback so it was nice to see Letter from Peking with its quaint illustration. The artist, CWB, whoever he/she was, has captured not only the lovely autumn trees on a Vermont farm, but also the body language of a woman who can't quite believe what she is reading in her letter. But, prompted by the blurb's statement that the book is wholly without propagandist aim I think there may have also been another purpose to this illustration, and that may have been to reassure potential readers with the book's American setting. It was 1957, during the Cold War, and the Communist Revolution in China had consolidated its grip on power. As we see in the book, amongst ordinary people there was a real fear of China and suspicion of anyone favourable to it. Even a writer as well-loved as Pearl Buck may have needed to be careful.
The contents of the letter are not fully revealed until the end of the book, but Gerald's words haunt the story. This couple has been separated for five years now, Gerald staying in China after the Communists took power, while sending Elizabeth and their son Rennie back to safety in America. Letters have been intermittent, and always sent via clandestine means. This one has been mailed from Hong Kong, and it is inside an envelope addressed by a strange hand.
I read the letter, over and over again. In the silent autumn air, no wind stirring, the bright leaves floated down. I could hear Gerald's voice speaking the words he had written.
My dear wife:
First, before I say what must be said, let me tell you that I love you. Whatever I do now, remember that it is you I love. If you never receive a letter from me again, know that in my heart I write you every day. (p.10)
The rest of the letter affects her so profoundly that she puts it away in a drawer, determined never to read it again. But she is not angry. Because Gerald is bi-racial and she had to stand up to her racist mother to marry him, she believes that there is something very special about their love and is determined not to relinquish it. This faith in her husband's love and fidelity sustains her over the difficult days ahead.
Born in China to a Chinese woman and his American father known as 'Baba', Gerald met Elizabeth when he came to America to study at Harvard. She went with him when he returned to his homeland, and they lived very happily there, their contentment marred only by the death of a baby daughter. Americans were not welcome after the Revolution, but it was always intended that the separation would be temporary and that they would be reunited. They did not expect suspicion to fall on Gerald because he had always been accepted in China as one of their own.
Rennie, as he comes of age in Vermont, however, is uncomfortable about his Chinese heritage. He is not obviously bi-racial in appearance and he conceals his parentage from his first girlfriend. Elizabeth is uneasy about this fledgling relationship, and meddles, using his Chinese antecedents to expose the racism of the girl and her family. Like any all-American boy, Rennie takes a dim view of this.
The story is told entirely from Elizabeth's point-of-view, written as if the text is a diary. She is reflective, but not entirely self-aware. When they travel to Kansas to rescue Baba in his old age, she doesn't respond to the neighbour's accusation that they were folks who let an old man wander around alone. Yet she admits to herself that they were selfish and wrong to believe that anyone who reached America had reached heaven.
We thought of Baba as safe merely because he had left the troubled provinces of China. We had a few letters from him, placid letters, saying that he was comfortable and we were not to worry about him, that he had found friends. And beset with our own worries, in wars and dangers, we simply forgot him. (p.56)
Most of what I see at Goodreads focusses on the race and cultural issues that arise in the book, and although it's not great literature in terms of style or form, Letter from Peking is a milestone because of the way that it tackles the prejudice both implicit and explicit in the experiences of Elizabeth's son. But IMO there's more to it than that:
When I look at my reading record, I don't seem to have come across another book from this era that features a sole parent. The book shows the loneliness, the doubts about how to raise her son and his growing urge towards independence, and having to fend off unwanted attentions from men (nice though they are). It shows her managing the farm, making decisions alone, putting in long hours of hard outdoor work and having to negotiate with a patronising man over the purchase of some sheep. Though the culture of filial piety and duty is very strong in China, it shows that it is she who takes on responsibility for Gerald's elderly father, and it is she who tends him as his body and mind fail.
For a book that's over 60 years old now, its message still reverberates today.
Author: Pearl S. BuckTitle: Letter from Peking
Publisher: Methuen, London, 1957,
ISBN: none. First edition, hardback.
Source: Personal library, OpShopFind, $5.00.
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