I was made to visit with supervising adults within my family the Pearl S. Buck Birthplace Museum in Hillsboro, West Virginia, as a young boy. It was my forced introduction to the Nobel and Pulitzer-winning author, and I was bored stiff. I distinctly remember the stately museum’s period rural antiques, dated artifacts from her life, hardwood floors, and perfectly made up “folksy” beds. I was instructed “Pearl Buck” was an important writer and Far East missionary, but I was still trying to get the hang of cursive writing and making sense of roaming dinosaurs, Adam and Eve’s story, and the marrying of the two distinct worlds.

I wasn’t “bored to tears” with Mrs. Buck’s childhood home,  but I’d rather have been floating my battleship toy in a nearby running creek, or trying to make sparks with flint rocks to give the battleship more drama.

My late grandfather and WWII Marine, “Papaw” Bill Evans, was the residing superintendent of the Edray Fish Hatchery in Marlinton, West Virginia, producing rainbow trout about 20 minutes drive from the Buck Museum. Now this hatchery, dear to my memory, has gushing mountain water pounding little, fast creeks that made the Buck Museum seem a dry affair.

Much later, while I was attending a film studies class in college, trying to raise my GPA from 2.001, and overcome a liberal arts college curriculum that invited dedicated students from all over the world, I watched The Good Earth  (1937), a beautifully filmed b/w American drama about poor Chinese farmers in a struggle for survival, winning Luise Rainer as “O-Lan” the Academy Award for Best Actress. After seeing this film, I started to warm up to Pearl Buck.

The Good Earth is a masterpiece of 20-century literature that makes epic with plain, poetic prose the tale of a Chinese farmer. Anyone this gifted at writing simple yet lyrical depictions of rural life in China has my attention when it comes to held views to inform such artistry.

And kudos to Oprah Winfry’s book club championing this title, reviving interest in Buck’s classic 1931 novel, bringing it to a modern audience in 2020, one reader at a time in Israel.

Peony is a 1948 novel that tells Buck’s story of the historical Kaifberg Jews in 19th-century China. This story centers on a Chinese bondmaid named Peony, who falls passionately in love with the son of the wealthy 1850s Jewish family she serves, during a culture clash.

Of course, there are critics that find Buck’s style a tad melodramatic. I say those critics often can’t see the forest for the melodramatic trees, and have a magnificent obsession with calling good things bad and bad things good, or possibly great.

One wonders what Buck, who was a social critic in her own right, would think of Trump’s “America First” policies, made more aggressive, and systematic his second term. Based on her life’s work promoting international understanding, racial equality, and humanitarian aid,  she would likely have strongly fought to oppose his brutish “America First” meanderings.

Her life’s dedication to multiculturalism and humanitarianism contradicts the nationalism, personified by combative Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth’s “we negotiate with bombs” sycophantic podium rhetoric, with Trump breathing heavy over his shoulder, and mean-spirited immigrant restrictions brought to brown-skinned children of the “America First” agenda gone south.

Has the U.S immigration reform done some good? Yes. But it’s done more harm than good, affecting negatively agriculture, construction, and hospitality, and causing undue trauma to immigrant families.

The problem starting with President Biden’s early immigration policy, in my view, aimed to undo Trump-era policies out of spite. It created wild surges of illegal border crossings. And that led to Biden trying to undo a  mistake with executive actions in 2024 to swiftly deport migrants and severely restrict asylum for his own political survival, or so  Ol’ Joe thought.

And what would have been Buck’s sentiment for Biden’s immigration policies? She likely would have advocated for treating immigrants with sympathy and compassion, focusing on the human tragedy behind the huge influx of immigrants into the millions, not just political expediency. But she would have likely condemned policies aiming to thwart immigration or depart migrants cruelly that Biden hurriedly installed.

Buck strongly argued for welcoming immigrants to foster a diverse society, emphasizing that “America from the very first has had her beginning in all peoples.”

Having lived and been expelled from China, to inform her literary career and her character, and having advocating for global peace and understanding, it’s fair to say Buck would likely have viewed the “America First” business as an dangerous form of isolationism that ignores the sacred interrelation of human life, favoring humanitarian goals and generous cultural exchange over greedy nationalistic self-interest and its elites capitalizing on the agenda.

So here we are. We don’t have Pearl S. Buck. But we do have Donald J. Trump and his love for money. And Trump’s administration is easily swayed by U.S. billionaire allies “crushing it” off of war, such as Palantir’s Thiel and Karp, Oracle’s Larry Ellison, and X’s Elon Musk influencing wartime communications with Starlink charm, defense contractors, and Trump’s own nepotistic family business dealings, with Jared Kushner’s fait accompli diplomacy becoming apparent to everyone but Mr. Eyes Wide Shut, and Prime Minister Netanyahu referring to Trump as “the greatest friend Israel ever had in the White House,” .

Poor Netanyahu, with his beautiful speaking voice and poised countenance, is doubling down on “U.S. might makes right” because of the “existential threat” to Israel, beyond the clearly “tangible threat” that currently exists with Iranian “bad actors” at play with their proxies.

But if God be for you who be against you? Because Trump has just showed us recently by his Truth Social post that he thinks he’s God, or a symbol of God, and he falls short of heaven, if only by having his MAGA followers recite song lyrics to “The Snake” to suggest his nature.

Iranian President Pezeshkian commented on the post with pure condemnation in addition to  saying the hypocritical attacks on Pope Leo XIV were insulting, and followed by U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance (on occasion wearing black eye-liner and a thirsty smile not unlike a  calculated hillbilly version of Count Dracula) informing the “Vicar of Christ” to be careful when bringing scriptural criticism to U.S. ways and ends, juxtaposed by the Iranian president declaring, “the desecration of Jesus, the Prophet of peace and brotherhood, is unacceptable to any free person,” echoing Buck’s deep admiration for Christ’s moral teachings, specifically  holy emphasis on love, compassion, and service to the “least of these.”

Pearl Buck was a staunch proponent of human freedom, and held a social-gospel approach to Christ’s message of peace and brotherhood. President Pezeshkian’s condemnation of Trump evoking self-idolatry with his AI-generated Jesus-like mockery aligns with her advocacy of human dignity, interfaith respect, and the reverence of Jesus, who later threw Trump a hug in another Truth Social post meant to water down the religious injury with further insult, and viewed by the astonished the grotesque parody of Trump’s moral collapse infused with AI.

President Pezeshkian, who has every reason to be angry at heart and susceptible to revenge, instead called for shared sanctity, which parallels Buck’s belief in a universal brotherhood and opposition to exploiting a sacred, holy figure in Christ for political maneuvering and wealth procurement.

In 1938, Pearl S. Buck became the first American woman honored with the Nobel Prize for literature. Establishing “The Good Earth & Love of Life” culture centers to assist resilient communities in war-torn areas to align with the enduring legacies of  Buck and Jack London is an idea brought forward. It would bridge Buck’s humanitarian dedication to advocating for the marginalized and empathetic cultural understanding with London’s philosophical focus on raw survival, resilience, and “will to live” publicly embraced by Presidents Putin and Xi.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)