Pearl of China

Aku adalah bagian dari China karena aku tinggal di sana sejak kanak-kanak hingga dewasa....
My Several Worlds, Pearl S. Buck

Chinese culture and history are always be my cup of tea. I love reading books written by Pearl S. Buck, Amy Tan, Jun Chang and Lisa See. But Pearl S. Buck with her debut novel The Good Earth is always be my all time favorite book. From this book we could get the detail description about Wan Lung's life as a poor farmer in China. This great book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 and in 1938 Pearl became the first American woman who was awarded by nobel prize in literature.

Pearl of China is a novel based on Pearl S. Buck memoir. The author, Anchee Min, conveys her story with a factual conditions. She created a friendship between Willow, a Chinese girl, and Pearl. Pearl is a daughter of American missionaries. Her father was stationed in China. Although she was born in US but she knew Chinese language first before she mastered her native language, English.

From this book we know how Pearls spent her childhood and teenage period in China and why she loved China very much and considered it as her homeland. Pearl experienced several dangerous periods in China, the communist, the Boxer Revolution, and many more that forced her to go to US. She had never been allowed to return to China and finally died in US.

In fact, the author, Anchee Min, was also one of the person who joined a demonstration in rejecting Pearl's visa to enter China. According to the author, at that time (1971) as a senior high school student, without knowing the real truth, she just followed Madame Mao's order and considered Pearl as an American Cultural Imperialist. Until one day, when she promoted her own memoir Red Azalea in Chicago, a woman asked her about Pearl and gave Anchee The Good Earth novel. She read it and cried all over it. From then on the idea to write Pearl of China came to her mind.

The book already translated into Bahasa Indonesia by Penerbit Qanita on February 2011. Great story. Good translation. Highly recommended.