An epic story of agrarian China.

A really different world than the one I know, but certainly familiar in a few ways. Very absorbing story. ( )

Very good Chinese story of peasants, hardships, and love. ( )

A Pulitzer Prize Novel ( )

Though written by a white woman, having lived many years in China, I suppose she was familiar enough with her subject. I would be curious to know what the kind of people she wrote about, thought about what she wrote about them, were it possible.
It is interesting to read about a foreign culture, though it be frustratingly different from the way you were raised. In the protagonist, Wang Lung's eyes, when his wife bore daughters to them, it was considered bad luck, and they were even denoted as slaves, and indeed many were often sold into slavery when the family was poor. Maybe it's only what poor Wang Lung deserves, when chances occur that transform him from a poor farmer with a former slave for a wife, into a landed, rich man with endless cares, who is forever worried with troubles, when he only wants to enjoy his riches. White woman writing an Eastern culture or not, Buck has valuable lessons for her readers. ( )