Title: Middlebrow Mission : Pearl S. Buck's American China /
Authors: Künnemann, Vanessa,
Year: 2015
Subjects: Buck, Pearl S. Criticism and interpretation.; Missions in literature.; American literature History and criticism; Chinese Americans Intellectual life.; Missions, American China History.; China In literature.
Abstract: Nobel Prize winner Pearl S. Buck's engagment with (neo- ) missionary cultures in the United States and China was unique. Against the backdrop of her missionary upbringing, Buck developed a fictional project which both revised and reaffirmed American foreign missionary activity in the Pacific Rim durinjg the 20th century. Vanessa Künnemann accurately traces this project from America's number one expert on China - as Buck came to be known - from a variety of disciplinary angles, placing her work squarely in Middlebrow Studies and New American Studies. -- from back cover.
Contents: An aromatic blend of America and China: Introducing Pearl Buck's middlebrow mission -- 1. The sentimental imperialism of American women missionaries in China -- 2. The Exile and Fighting Angel: Pearl Buck's gendered critique of missions -- 3. Pearl Buck's Coming of Age: East Wind, West Wind -- 4. Reversing the Middlebrow: The Good Earth -- 5. China/Town hybridity and (Neo- ) Missionary notalgia: "His own country" and kinfold -- 6. Coda: "We haven't deserted him exactly, we just haven't known how to fit him in." The missionaray legacy in Pearl Buck and her fiction.