Across Cultures and Ethnicities: A Multicultural Reading of Pearl S Buck.

A writer much ahead of her time, Pearl S Buck spent her childhood and early years of youth in China, and her writings about the East helped it in developing cultural ties with the West. Buck dealt with many multicultural issues, including race, immigration, women, and minority rights. She was a political activist who had a deep insight and understanding of world politics particularly American politics, and very well gauged the need to bring about a radical change in the global political scenario. Her works explicitly deal with these issues, which, in the 1990s and beyond, became focal points around which the philosophical discourse on multiculturalism was constructed. She believed in "cultural competence"--"the ability of a person to effectively interact, work, and develop meaningful relationships with people of various cultural backgrounds." This paper presents a multicultural reading of Buck's oeuvre and her work as a cultural and social activist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]