An interesting comment came through our Facebook page today from
Rachid Aadnani who teaches
Arabic at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.
I read Pearl S. Buck's novel The Good Earth, translated into Arabic as الأرض الطيبة when I was in high school in Morocco. Great to see a page devoted to her. It was one of the first texts I read that were set in Asia. Absolutely loved that novel. It actually made me want to read more and more. So, thank you Ms. Buck!!!
Included with the message was the cover of the Arabic translation you see to the right. Literature can be a really important tool for self-discovery, and understanding, but equally importantly, it can help us understand people who different from us. It shows us the characteristics and emotions we share, and helps us understand how differences may not necessarily be all the strange after all. Pearl Buck was a master of that. She did not hide the exotic nature of the cultures she wrote about, be it her ancestral, the one she was born into but has little experience of until she returned to the United States as an adult, or her adopted culture. Rather she treated them as matter of fact, and cut straight to the essence of the story. Maybe this is why Pearl Buck is such a major figure of world literature, as appreciated abroad as she is here.
