Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Bridge Across the Pacific

by Kang Liao

Overview

Pearl S. Buck's portrayal of Chinese peasants was the first literary representation, in China as well as in America, of the majority of the Chinese population. Her work changed the image of the Chinese people in the American mind—ultimately facilitating the 1943 repeal of the 61-year-old Chinese Exclusion Act and arousing Americans' support of the Chinese resistance against the Japanese aggression in World War II. From a multicultural point of view, Chinese scholar Kang Liao analyzes Buck's phenomenal success and the ensuing neglect of her works by American critics. Liao's insights into Buck's function as one of the few writers from an age of Eurocentrism who shed light on a new age of multiculturalism will be of interest to both students and scholars interested in race, class, and gender issues.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780313301469
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/30/1997
Series:	Contributions to the Study of World Literature , #77
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.56(d)
Lexile:	1430L (what's this?)

About the Author

KANG LIAO has been Lecturer and Director of English at Beijing Normal University. He has also taught at West Virginia University, State University of New York at New Paltz, and the University of Aberdeen, U.K. His publications include over one hundred encyclopedia entries, and co-translations of Mao: A Biography, The Rise and Fall of Lin Piao, and Fast Reading: A Teaching Manual.

Table of Contents

Preface
A Paradoxical Enigma
A Neglected Laureate
A Single-Handed Crusader
A Multicultural Mediator
A Historic Mirror
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

A well-balanced evaluation of Buck's cultural and aesthetic expertise analyzing the success and later neglect of her novels from a multicultural perspective. Liao (English, Beijing Normal U.) suggests that Buck is a paradoxical enigma whose work considerably improved the image of the Chinese people in the American mind but lacked a sense of modernism that reduces her novels' artistry, perhaps contributing to her fade-out in the "historic mirror" of literary studies. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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