The Good Earth

Though The Good Earth was a massive success in America, the Chinese government objected to Buck’s stark portrayal of the country’s rural poverty and, in 1972, banned Buck from returning to the country

The Child Who Never Grew, about her life with Carol; this candid account helped break the social taboo on discussing learning disabilitie

daughter, Carol, who had been institutionalized in New Jersey with a rare and severe type of mental retardation.

he was ashamed, and yet half proud too, as one feels himself who is still lusty and a man when others hold him to be only grandfather.

Wang Lung that this slave gave birth only to a girl, for if it had been a boy she would have been proud and have claimed a place in the family, but being a girl it was only slave bearing slave, and she was no more than before

Then the boy went away swiftly and Wang Lung sat alone and he said to himself that his two girls were better after all than his sons, one, poor fool that she was, never wanted anything more than a bit of any food and her length of cloth to play with, and the other one married and away from his house.

is ill for me, a man, to do it, but my first grandson is about to be born and it is a heavy labor for the mother, who is a town woman and too narrowly made, and the mother of my son is dead, and there is no woman to thrust in the incense.”

There was none to trouble him, for his youngest son was a silent lad who kept out of his father’s way and Wang Lung scarcely knew what he was, so silent a lad was he.

There in that land of mine is buried the first good half of my life and more. It is as though half of me were buried there, and now it is a different life in my house.”

And suddenly he wept a little, and he dried his eyes with the back of his hand, as a child does.

So for his uncle’s wife and for his uncle’s son Wang Lung hired chairs also and for all of them he had robes of sackcloth, and even for the poor fool he made a robe and hired a chair and put her in it, although she was sorely bewildered and laughed shrilly when there should have been only weeping.