In 1938, Buck became the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature "for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China" and for her "masterpieces", two memoir-biographies of her missionary parents.

She and her parents spent their summers in a villa in Kuling, Mount Lu, Jiujiang, and it was during this annual pilgrimage that the young girl decided to become a writer.

From 1914 to 1932, after marrying John Lossing Buck, she served as a Presbyterian missionary, but she came to doubt the need for foreign missions.

[5] Her parents, Southern Presbyterian missionaries, were married on July 8, 1880 and moved to China shortly thereafter, but returned to the United States for Pearl's birth.

When Pearl was five months old, the family returned to China, living first in Huai'an and then in 1896 moving to Zhenjiang, which was then known as Chingkiang in the Chinese postal romanization system, near the major city of Nanjing.

A few years later, Buck was enrolled in Miss Jewell's School in Shanghai, and was dismayed at the racist attitudes there of other students, few of whom could speak any Chinese.

Although Buck had not intended to return to China, much less become a missionary, she quickly applied to the Presbyterian Board when her father wrote that her mother was seriously ill.

In a confused battle involving elements of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist troops, Communist forces, and assorted warlords, several Westerners were murdered.

Since her father Absalom insisted, as he had in 1900 in the face of the Boxers, the family decided to stay in Nanjing until the battle reached the city.

She wanted to fulfill the ambitions denied to her mother, but she also needed money to support herself if she left her marriage, which had become increasingly lonely.

Buck traveled once more to the United States in 1929 to find long-term care for Carol, eventually placing her in the Vineland Training School in New Jersey.

Buck served on the Board of Trustees for the school, at which Carol lived for the rest of her life and where she eventually died in 1992 at age 72.

Back in Nanking, Buck retreated every morning to the attic of her university house, and within the year, completed the manuscript for The Good Earth.

When the talk was published in Harper's Magazine,[19] the scandalized reaction led Buck to resign her position with the Presbyterian Board.

[21] Buck divorced her husband John in Reno, Nevada on June 11, 1935,[22] and she married Richard Walsh that same day.

The couple moved with Janice to Green Hills Farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, which they quickly set about filling with adopted children.

After an extensive discussion of classic Chinese novels, especially Romance of the Three Kingdoms, All Men Are Brothers, and Dream of the Red Chamber, she concluded that in China "the novelist did not have the task of creating art but of speaking to the people."

She wrote on diverse subjects, including women's rights, Asian cultures, immigration, adoption, missionary work, war, the atomic bomb (Command the Morning), and violence.

Long before it was considered fashionable or politically safe to do so, Buck challenged the American public by raising consciousness on topics such as racism, sex discrimination and the plight of Asian war children.

Buck combined the careers of wife, mother, author, editor, international spokesperson, and political activist.

"[30]In 1960, after a long decline in health that included a series of strokes,[31] Buck's husband Richard Walsh died.

[33] During a December 17, 1962 visit to the Kennedy White House, Buck urged the Kennedy administration to help resolve People's Republic of China-Taiwan relations by supporting de facto independence of Taiwan for a 10 to 25 year period with an agreement that afterwards a plebiscite could be held based on a negotiated settlement.

[38] In the mid-1960s, Buck increasingly came under the influence of Theodore Harris, a former dance instructor, who became her confidant, co-author, and financial advisor.

"[39] Before her death, Buck signed over her foreign royalties and her personal possessions to Creativity Inc., a foundation controlled by Harris.

[46] Kang Liao argues that Buck played a "pioneering role in demythologizing China and the Chinese people in the American mind".

"[48] These works aroused considerable popular sympathy for China, and helped foment a more critical view of Japan and its aggression.