Editing Pearl S. Buck (section)

===Nobel Prize in Literature===
In 1938 the [[Nobel Committee for Literature|Nobel Prize committee]] in awarding the prize said:

{{blockquote|By awarding this year's Prize to Pearl Buck for the notable works which pave the way to a human sympathy passing over widely separated racial boundaries and for the studies of human ideals which are a great and living art of portraiture, the Swedish Academy feels that it acts in harmony and accord with the aim of Alfred Nobel's dreams for the future.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1938/ceremony-speech/|title=The Nobel Prize in Literature 1938|website=NobelPrize.org}}</ref>}}

In her speech to the Academy, Buck took as her topic "The Chinese Novel". She explained, "I am an American by birth and by ancestry", but "my earliest knowledge of story, of how to tell and write stories, came to me in China." After an extensive discussion of classic Chinese novels, especially ''[[Romance of the Three Kingdoms]]'', ''[[Water Margin|All Men Are Brothers]]'', and ''[[Dream of the Red Chamber]]'', she concluded that in China "the novelist did not have the task of creating art but of speaking to the people." Her own ambition, she continued, had not been trained toward "the beauty of letters or the grace of art." In China, the task of the novelist differed from the Western artist: "To farmers he must talk of their land, and to old men he must speak of peace, and to old women he must tell of their children, and to young men and women he must speak of each other." And like the Chinese novelist, she concluded, "I have been taught to want to write for these people. If they are reading their magazines by the million, then I want my stories there rather than in magazines read only by a few."<ref>Nobel Lecture (1938) [https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1938/buck-lecture.html# The Chinese Novel]</ref>