Customer Reviews (1)

Yes, it IS about making a movie.
Pearl S. Buck, A Bridge for Passing (Pocket, 1962)

The strength of Pearl Buck's writing, it becomes evident from page one, is in her ability to tell a story as if she were sitting next to you sipping lemonade on an unseasonably cool August day. Her observations are flowery, well-described, and often at least a touch naïve; one wonders, had she written the book ten years later, if it would have had the same tone it does.

A Bridge for Passing intertwines the filming of her novel The Big Wave, the first major collaboration between Japanese and American filmmakers (and now unforgivably obscure), with the death of her husband of twenty-five years. And oddly, though the ratio of the two in page real estate is about 90/10, the reviews, the blurbs, and the cover reverse the ratio when talking about the book. To the rest of the world, it seems, A Bridge for Passing was a precursor to the spate of books that started appearing roughly a decade later about how to handle major life crises. The movie was just an afterthought.

Not so, Othello. The movie is the mechanism by which Buck learns to deal with her grief, true, but there is much more to it than that. This is no fictional memoir; we are treated to the lives of real people, most of whom have remained obscure from the American perspective, but some of whom are not (Big Wave director Ted Danielewski, for example, has a pair of kids well known to media critics, House of Leaves author Mark Danielewski and his sister, the singer known as Poe). And when one keeps one's mind on the idea that these are real people, one starts to realize the enormity of the task Buck and her cohorts have set themselves. This is not just an on location shoot, this is politics of the highest order (and only fifteen years after the unpleasantness at the end of World War II).

There is much to be said for the way in which her husband's death pervades the book, but any Buck fans who have avoided this, fearing it to be nothing but a celebrity-penned self-help tome, put your fears at ease. This one's a keeper. *** ½ ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Determined Man
Pearl S. Buck gives an account of her father's life beginning with family history, his childhood and education.
She then follows his path to China where he served as a missionary.She speaks of his missionary dedication, his trials and the shifting politics in China.
She idealizes this man who was a cold, distant father and who frequently was gone, leaving his wife and children to cope on their own. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Pearl S. Buck's Matthew, Mark, Luke and John
Many, many years ago when I was quite young I found this story in a magazine somewhere at some appointment.It was condensed, I'm sure, but I was none-the-less enthralled with the story of these Amerasian children, cast out and living under a bridge and fending for themselves and each other.Outcasts, shunned by family and Asians and Americans alike because of their mixed blood. I couldn't leave it so I tore it out of the magazine and took it with me.At home, I stapled it together and put it in a folder and read it over and over. I returned to it later in life in it's full form and loved it just the same. It is truly a worthy read! Keep tissues handy.

Fourth Graders Love This Book
I was surprised to find a book named after the Four Evangelists in the library of the public school where I teach.Intrigued, I checked it out and read it to my fourth grade class.They were transfixed!(The language is starkly beautiful, and the story compelling.)My students decided that this was a wonderful book.Since so many wanted to read it again for themselves, I am buying a copy to put into our classroom library.

This book strikes a chord
A wonderful little one-sitting read-aloud book.We have two adopted children and have enjoyed reading it several times over the years.Pearl S. Buck at her best.

Ok
The story is about Matthew, a little boy whose father was an American soldier and whose mother was Korean.One day his mother abandons him and Matthew is left in Pusan to fend for himself.The story shows how interracial children in Korea faced a lot of discrimination.I was unaware of this issue.Kids interested in history and other lands may like this book.I myself am a bit lukewarm to the book-I thought the ending was too saccharine.

Touching and Inspirational
I remember very clearly my mother handing me a couple of books she had picked up at the library for me; at age nine I was already a bookworm.Matthew, Mark, Luke and John instantly caught my attention, and I read it in one sitting.Although as a child, I didn't understand that it was about mixed-race chilren or why they had been abandoned, I sympathized instantly with the plight of a little boy trying to fend for himself and the younger boys that come into his life.It is a deeply touching and inpiriational story about the strength and generosity of the human spirit, even in bad circumstances.Although Matthew (the main charecter) is alone and barely supporting himself, he refuses to resort to theft, and bravely accepts both his circumstances and the responsibility for other children brought to him without complaining.Over the years, the story has always stayed bright in my mind.I'm sorry to see that it's so expensive-- I'd love the chance to read it again. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Yes, it IS about making a movie.
Pearl S. Buck, A Bridge for Passing (Pocket, 1962)

The strength of Pearl Buck's writing, it becomes evident from page one, is in her ability to tell a story as if she were sitting next to you sipping lemonade on an unseasonably cool August day. Her observations are flowery, well-described, and often at least a touch naïve; one wonders, had she written the book ten years later, if it would have had the same tone it does.

A Bridge for Passing intertwines the filming of her novel The Big Wave, the first major collaboration between Japanese and American filmmakers (and now unforgivably obscure), with the death of her husband of twenty-five years. And oddly, though the ratio of the two in page real estate is about 90/10, the reviews, the blurbs, and the cover reverse the ratio when talking about the book. To the rest of the world, it seems, A Bridge for Passing was a precursor to the spate of books that started appearing roughly a decade later about how to handle major life crises. The movie was just an afterthought.

Not so, Othello. The movie is the mechanism by which Buck learns to deal with her grief, true, but there is much more to it than that. This is no fictional memoir; we are treated to the lives of real people, most of whom have remained obscure from the American perspective, but some of whom are not (Big Wave director Ted Danielewski, for example, has a pair of kids well known to media critics, House of Leaves author Mark Danielewski and his sister, the singer known as Poe). And when one keeps one's mind on the idea that these are real people, one starts to realize the enormity of the task Buck and her cohorts have set themselves. This is not just an on location shoot, this is politics of the highest order (and only fifteen years after the unpleasantness at the end of World War II).

There is much to be said for the way in which her husband's death pervades the book, but any Buck fans who have avoided this, fearing it to be nothing but a celebrity-penned self-help tome, put your fears at ease. This one's a keeper. *** ½ ... Read more

Product Description

After her husband takes a concubine, Madame Liang sets out on her own, starting an upscale restaurant and sending her daughters to America to be educated. At the restaurant, the leaders of the People's Republic wine and dine and Madame Liang must keep a low profile for her daughters' sake.

Soon her two eldest daughters are called back to serve the People's Republic. Her oldest daughter, Grace, now a doctor, finds meaning through her work. Things are not as easy for her daughter Mercy, a musician who is not in demand in the People's Republic, nor for her new husband who she has brought back to China with her.

Watching her two daughters grow apart and knowing that her youngest daughter will never return, Madame Liang must also face the challenges The Cultural Revolution, and how to keep herself and the restaurant, alive.

Customer Reviews (10)

mesmerizing
Since I read the Good Earth, I fell in love with the authors' style and the wonderful way of delivering her message. This book is a piece of art.

Mother's World-Daughers World
I really enjoyed this book as Ms. Buck was able to take the reader inside a family caught in a changing world during the Chinese revolution and show how the characters each acted and reacted according to the information they had and what they believed or wanted to believe about that information. Madam Liang, who is coming to terms with disillusionment about the revolution and her past part in it, and her daughters, who had been sent to America for education and protection and their return to China with patriotic and idealistic expectations, are classic generational viewpoint studies. The shocking ending to the story was unexpected and expected all at once. The basic story is still relevant today.

A family divided by the Cultural Revolution
"The Three Daughters of Madame Liang" was Pearl S. Buck's last major novel and it holds its own with the best of her work.In Madame Liang, Buck has created a fascinating character, a woman who is very much her own person.After doing the very un-Chinese thing of leaving her husband when he takes a concubine, which he claims is his right because his wife has produced no son, Madame Liang determines to make her own way in the world and opens a gourmet restaurant that caters to the high and mighty of the People's Republic (even good Communists appreciate good food).She has not only survived, but thrived, by keeping a low profile and providing her customers with the best.But she has sent her three daughters, Grace, Mercy and Joy, to America to be educated; and now, after many years separation, Grace has been called home by her government to serve the new society.

Madame Liang has her own opinions about the new society which she has prudently kept to herself.But Grace, back home in China, throws herself into her work as a doctor and embraces everything blindly, including a young physician named Liu Pang, who parrots everything he has read in Mao's Little Red Book.Mercy, the second sister, is a musician, whose talents are not in demand in the People's Republic; but she misses her home and induces her new husband, a rocket scientist, to return to their country.For Grace, the return home is the fulfillment of herself; for Mercy and her husband, it is a disaster.Meanwhile, the third sister, Joy, a painter, having found romance and happiness with a fellow artist who has left China for good and never intends to return, remains in America to make her life with him.

Madame Liang watches the growing tension and hostility dividing the two older sisters with alarm and resignation.She can't live her daughters' lives for them; all she can do is keep on living her own life.But her own life can't survive the insanity of the Cultural Revolution; the very success of her restaurant means she's an enemy of the working classes.The Cultural Revolution sweeps everything away in its path; including Madame Liang.

Buck writes with a flow that keeps her book moving effortlessly along like an unbroken skein of thread (one gets thoroughly caught up in the narrative before realizing that there are no chapters; the book moves from one scene to the next till the final page), covering some six or seven years from the end of the 50's to 1966.Through it all, Madame Liang's continually expressed faith in her country and people suggest that, whatever her own fate, China and its people will survive in spite of themselves.Although the book is ostensibly about her three daughters, it's really the story of a remarkable woman, and through her, the story of China in transition.

Nice intro to the Chinese perspective of the New Government
I thought this novel was a wonderful introduction to the mindset of the Chinese people, both those living in China, and those living in America, towards the new government. It was an enlightening story because as an American, we view it simply as a government as one that took away everyone's freedoms, which it did. Yet, of course, it's not that simple. The story is about that deeply-rooted devotion to one's mother country, no matter what changes it goes through. It also reveals what led to the change of government, and what problems arised and what new changes occurred afterward. Through Madame Liang, representing the older revolutionary generation, the story showed how the revolution failed, and she saw how certain mistakes in history were made. Through her daughters, it showed the hope in which the younger generation had for the new China, and their attempts to restore a strong nation within the new framework. Also revealed was the the repression of emotions, through Grace, the eldest daughter, her hopeless lusting after Liu Peng, yet knowing that his mind was narrow and brainwashed in the Communist school of thought. Of course, the repression of individual thought was evident with John Sung, the scientist who refused to create weapons to be used against Americans. The stories surrounding Mercy and Joy, Madame Liang's two other daughters, was interesting in that they both struggled with their loyalties to China, but love, in Joy's case, kept her in America, while experience in the new China, forced Mercy to escape. There were a lot of interesting themes throughout the story, the theme of love in light of this new way of life, the theme of pride in one's own race and country. The style in which the story was told was very different from that of "The Good Earth." Here it was a much more fast-moving narrative, and a great modern story.

I couldn't put this book down, but there's just one thing that bothered me, and that was the ending, which seemed so abrupt. All of a sudden certain events happened which bluntly put the entire story to an end. Certainly these events were convincing, yet it still left me completely shocked and almost disappointed once the novel was finished. That's the only reason why I gave it four stars.

A Moving, Deeply Personal Account of the Cultural Revolution
I have read more than a dozen novels by the extraordinary Pearl S. Buck, and this is one of my all time favorites. Buck's lucid writing, and deep understanding of complex cultural issues makes this a gem. Set against the back-drop of the Chinese cultural Revolution, THE THREE DAUGHTERS OF MADAME LIANG charts the deeply personal journey and loss of one Chinese family. There is a sophistication to Buck's writing that is not always immediately apparent, but once you become used to her voice, the deceptively simple prose gives way to deeply moving insights. This is a glowing, powerful novel about a family and a country at a crossroads. Don't miss it! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Great Literature
I first saw The Good Earth movie when I was staying in Izmir Turkey on December 31, 1989, and it has been on my short list of all-time best movies, right up there with The Mission, Man For All Seasons, Wagner, et al.The vendor did an impecable job of completing my order.Thank you! ... Read more

Product Description
fiction ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

Hidden Flower
It was advertized that the book was a "paperback." While that is technically true, I did not expect it to be a 1960, 4"x6" "Pocket Book," which sold for 35 cents. I paid $3.00 plus postage and handling, which made it pretty expensive for something that would sell at an average garage sale for no more than the stated price on the book -- 35 cents, and probably less. It is in good shape,but has very "yellowed" pages.

Great Book!
This is one of the best books by Pearl Buck. It is a story of inter-racial love and the challenges faced by a Japanese woman and an american soldier and the fate on an innocent child who is deprived of love and caring from both parents, thanks to the society we live in. Unfortunately, these situations are prevalent even today!
A great book whichwould appeal to every man and woman who have ever faced the demands of love!

Amazing!
I myself in a "inter-racial" relationship i completely understand where joshui was coming from.unfortuantely, this day in age it still happens.. oh well.I think she should've told the Allenn about the pregnancy, kinda disappointed that it just ended. :(

Overall, its a great, easy reading! n-joi!

My own hidden flower
I first read this book when I contained my own "not so" hidden flower, I was a six months pregnant American woman married to a native Japanese.I was also young, in my early twenties.It touched me incredibly deeply.It is the story of young naive love, love that does not question if it chooses wisely.It is about passion without reason and the consequences of that love that cause great pain in the end.The young heroine chooses to love an American military man and marry him.He is enamoured with her, comletely taken and brings her home to be his bride only to discover that it is against the law to be married to a non-white.Indeed this law was changed only within my own lifetime.I can't imagine having to make the terrible choices the young woman was faced with once she found she was going to have a baby.The other interesting issue is the taste the American serviceman shows for the sexy exotic nature of his bride, but when it truly comes to the reality of life he easily discards her. ALthough he initially married her one can see the old saying emerge:"Asian girls are for fun, white girls are for marriage."

A touching and sad story, one that is hard for the younger generation to comprehend.

Profound insights from a not so tolerant era
This book is one of the most intelligent, moving and open-minded statements on interracial love and relationships that I have ever come across. Buck's story of a star-crossed pair of East-West lovers set in post-War Japan explores the racial pride and prejudices of both the East and West. She also manages to tell a deeply moving human story that transcends race. And remember, she was doing this in pre-MLK America, when non-mixing of the races was a cherished American value. Few if any authors have handled this subject with more insight and even-handedness than Buck. And none with more genuine compassion. Should be required reading in any multi-ethnic society. ... Read more

Product Description
Pearl S. Buck's portrayal of Chinese peasants was the first literary representation, in China as well as in America, of the majority of the Chinese population. Her work changed the image of the Chinese people in the American mind--ultimately facilitating the 1943 repeal of the 61-year-old Chinese Exclusion Act and arousing Americans' support of the Chinese resistance against the Japanese aggression in World War II. From a multicultural point of view, Chinese scholar Kang Liao analyzes Buck's phenomenal success and the ensuing neglect of her works by American critics. Liao's insights into Buck's function as one of the few writers from an age of Eurocentrism who shed light on a new age of multiculturalism will be of interest to both students and scholars interested in race, class, and gender issues. ... Read more

Product Description
This is the biography of an American missionary in China. It is the life story of Pearl Buck's father. Only the names of the people are changed.

Absalom Sydenstricker (1852 1931) (renamed Andrew in the book) was the eighth of nine children born to a Presbyterian farming family in what would become West Virginia. At 22, Sydenstricker left home to complete high school. He went on to graduate from Washington and Lee College and Union Theological Seminary in Richmond. His resulting honors degrees were in classical languages.

In 1879, just prior to seminary graduation, he was accepted by the Southern Presbyterian Mission Board to be sent out to China. A marriage was arranged, he was wed just after graduation, and a month later the couple was on their way to China.

Sydenstricker would serve in twenty missions spread all over China during his career. His background in languages and his exposure to many regional forms of spoken Mandarin molded his approach to mission work and, indeed, led him to insist that the bible, hymnals, and tracts be translated into popular Mandarin instead of the scholarly classical Chinese used by Western missionaries for more than a half-century in order to reach the common people with the gospel.

Sydenstricker was unique among bible translators due to his command of Greek and Hebrew as well as his insistence on readability for the average Chinese Christian. He had a running feud with the official translators whom he blamed for the poor state of Christianity in China. While spectacularly unsuccessful against those official translators, his work heavily influenced the bible in use in China today.

Modern scholarship has shifted away from studying individuals to focus on broad movements within the missionary community such as liberalism, anti-opium activities, or women missionaries. While these inquiries can be important and helpful, a look into personalities like Sydenstricker reminds us that there were missionaries of immense influence within their often gigantic mission fields who are not so easily classified.

Sydenstricker was a contradictory and irascible man, isolated him from the rest of the missionary community, but he was also a man of stern convictions and complex personality sufficient reason to look again into the lives of individuals in order to gain understanding of today's Chinese church.

...freely adapted from Jost O. Zetzsche in The Missionary Kaleidoscope
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The way a man survives in a different country and dies there
Its the story of an american missioner named Andrew, who was strolling China's paths for over than 500 years, he arrived there young and diedthere. He had so many adventures that couldn't fit in just one book. He sawthe chinese people in their most intimate moments at home, like inweddings, sickness and death. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

okay...
arrived in a good amount of time, but the condition of the book was not all that great. ... Read more

Product Description
"Stirring Biography based on the life of Pearl Buck's mother." Pocket Books gold and red with a white Rose fronting an Asian Background. ... Read more

Product Description
A collection of unforgettable stories by one of the world's best-love storytellers. ... Read more

Product Description
FINE book/No dj issued, decorated covers.Deluxe red false leather with gilt top edge and lettering. Nice gift or to keep.Matching ribbon marker. Very clean, bright, straight, no markings or wear.1980s, International Collectors hardbound, 260 pp. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

great read!
great book about a woman losing her family, marrying for security, leaving then maturing into herself.Not preachy, whiney, or mushy.Just a wonderful story of choices and circumstances and hope and life.

This book is wonderfully written!
It is a tale of one woman's struggle to find her identity.It isn't sentimental or feminist, but simply a story about making the wrong choices... and surviving; only to find, that there is still plenty of timeto make the right ones.The book reads fast!!!I am an avid reader andthis one is my all-time favorite! ... Read more