PEARL S. BUCK - TYPED LETTER SIGNED 01/05/1967 - HFSID 18490

PEARL S. BUCK
Her signed letter regarding "new" China, which had been founded 17 years prior. It would take the US another 13 years before it recognized the Republic of China.
Typed letter signed: "Pearl S. Buck", 1p, 7¼x10½. Perkasie, Pennsylvania, 1967 January 5. On her personal letterhead to Dale Sokoloff, Nathaniel Hawthorne Jr. High School, Bayside, New York. In full: "I have your letter of November the 15th and please forgive my delay in answering it. I have only just returned from Korea and Japan. I wish I could answer your question about the new China. I am sure it is partly old and partly new. Unfortunately, we Americans have no means of communication with our great neighbor across the sea. Thank you for your invitation to visit your school. I wish I could but just now my schedule is very full. With kind good wishes, I am sincerely yours." Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973), born to Presbyterian missionaries, spent the first forty years of her life in China, the setting of many of her books. Her second novel, The Good Earth, won the 1932 Pulitzer Prize, and Buck also won the 1938 Nobel Prize in Literature for her epic works about China. She later wrote about other Asian nations, such as India (Mandala) and Korea (The Living Reed). When Buck wrote this letter, the U.S. had for seventeen years declined to recognize the People's Republic of China. That nation was itself isolated to an unusual degree in 1967 by the upheavals of its "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution." Within five years, communication would begin to improve, as Richard Nixon made the first visit of an American President to China in February 1972. Fine condition.