A Nobel Prize
ME: What was the impact of having Pearl Buck as your aunt, in terms of your being a mother and a woman and how you’ve thought about all that?
MOM: The major impact on my mother preceded Pearl, which was that she was born to a mother who had lost four children and was really not available as a mother to my mother. And so that left a huge vacuum which Pearl filled. Pearl was seven years older, and I think in many ways was a surrogate mother to my mother. And of course, Pearl was not Pearl Buck at that point. She was my mom’s older sister. But she was doubtless a very large presence, given that Pearl was always a large presence.
ME: Right.
MOM: My mom said in later years that she had an inferiority complex, and I think that stemmed from both of those things, from not having a really robust sense of her own mother’s presence and Pearl’s large presence. But I have to say down the road, Pearl used her connections to open doors for my mother so that my mother’s writing career was fostered and supported and nurtured by Pearl’s editors. And the fact of my mother having that writing career made an enormous difference in her life and in mine, so that the world I grew up in was one in which I had a mother who was available as a mother and who had a life of her own, which I have to say, my mother managed to do that in a way that I’m sure I was not able to do as skillfully. She wrote while I wasn’t at home and was available when I was. I didn’t have a sense of being deprived by her career.
Photo Credit JFK Library, Nobel Laureates at the White House
Next: Â A Young Mother
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A nice article. We are the same age, Tom. My mother did not join the feminist movement and revolutions of the 60s. My father was dean of a law school and very establishment-oriented, and she devoted herself to support of his career. Instead she subconsciously channeled her objections to the patriarchal system through me – and my father made me his intellectual ally and friend because my mother could not – or would not – relate to him on that level. So I see some parallels in growing up in revolutionary times, which in some sense continue today. I too… Read more »
I loved this interview. My mother’s parents were Presbyterian missionaries to Cuba. When I was 9, my family lived In Mexico and I remember my mother putting Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth in my hand and telling me how much she identified with her, for the love of adventure, the giving to others, the religious background, and the fact that both were adoptive mothers.
And about your mother–she sounds like a fascinating woman and it’s remarkable what she accomplished given the fact that she often felt depressed and isolated. Thanks for sharing her with us.
Very cool Pauline. Thanks for reading. Glad we have that Presbyterian missionarie blood in common…