''The Exile'' (New York: John Day, 1936) is a memoir/biography, or work of creative non-fiction, written by

Pearl S. Buck Pearl Sydenstricker Buck (June 26, 1892 – March 6, 1973) was an American writer and novelist. She is best known for ''The Good Earth'' a bestselling novel in the United States in 1931 and 1932 and won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, Pulitze ...

about her mother, Caroline Stulting Sydenstricker (1857–1921), describing her life growing up in West Virginia and life in China as the wife of the Presbyterian missionary

Absalom Sydenstricker Absalom Andrew Sydenstricker (, 1852–1931) was an American Presbyterian missionary to China from 1880 to 1931.Jost Zetzsche. "Absalom Sydenstricker," in K. Lodwick and W. C. Kwan, (ed.), ''The Missionary Kaleidoscope: Portraits of Six China Mis ...

. The book is deeply critical of her father and the mission work in China for their treatment of women. Buck also traces the arc of her mother's disillusionment with religion. The success of the book led Buck to write a parallel memoir of her father, . Although the book was not published until 1936, Buck wrote a draft just after her mother died in 1920, then stashed the manuscript in the wall so that her future children might know their grandmother. “Carie,” as she calls her mother in the book, went to China in hopes that God would speak to her if she made the sacrifice of becoming a missionary, but soon found she had exiled herself from her American home and family. When the deaths of three of her children in China made her sacrifice seem meaningless, she exiled herself also from the traditional patriarchal God of her parents and finally even from her husband. In Buck's description, Carie built a succession of homes for her children and bestowed charity on neighbors and strangers even as she offered unbending moral judgment on her family. “Carie’s daughter,” as Pearl called herself, determined to never make her mother’s mistake of subordinating herself to either a man or to a zealous creed. In awarding Buck the 1938 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Nobel Committee cited these two memoirs of her parents. They found, however, a “flaw” in ''The Exile'': “The daughter's devotion to her mother makes it impossible for her to do justice to her father.” But the Committee felt Buck redeemed herself in ''Fighting Angel'': while the “portrait conceals none of his repellent features,” his daughter “maintained pure reverence before the nobility of the whole. Per Hallström
Award Ceremony Speech
Nobel Prize.org

Notes

Reading

* , originally New York: John Day. * . * . {{DEFAULTSORT:Exile, The Works by Pearl S. Buck 1936 non-fiction books Novels set in West Virginia Novels set in China John Day Company books Works about missionaries