The Big Wave

American author Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973) was born in West Virginia to Presbyterian missionaries who took her to China when she was five months old. She and her family lived in China for her entire childhood. Buck was raised to view the Chinese people as equal and was later dismayed by the racism of other white missionaries and expatriates in China. Buck was educated in both English and classical Chinese. She remained in China until 1911, when, at the age of 19, she moved to the US to attend Randolph-Macon Women’s College in Virginia.

In 1914, Buck returned to China, where she met and married fellow Presbyterian missionary John Lossing Buck in 1917. They lived in the Anhui Province near the Huai River, the region she made famous in her beloved novel The Good Earth. There, Buck taught English. In 1927, they were briefly forced to flee to Japan during an outbreak of violence between nationalist and communist forces in China; Buck’s time in Japan would contribute to her portrayal of Japanese culture and people in works like The Big Wave. In the 1930s, Buck became convinced that the Chinese people did not need the dominating influence of foreign missionaries. She eventually moved back to the US and divorced her husband, remarrying the same day.