Pearl Sydenstricker was born in West Virginia, but soon moved to China where her parents were Presbyterian missionaries. She went to school in Shanghai and then moved to the United States, where she graduated from Randolph-Macon Women's College in Lynchburg, Virginia in 1914. In 1917 she married John L. Buck, a missionary, and together they moved to China. She got a job teaching at a university in Nanking. In China, Buck studied a variety of Chinese novels and started to incorporate many elements into her own writing.In 1923, she began writing magazine articles about Chinese life. In 1931, she wrote The Good Earth, a story about a poor Chinese peasant and his wife struggling to gain land and prestige. The Good Earth won the the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. She then wrote other books which also described life in China, including Sons (1932) and A House Divided (1935).

After moving back to the United States, Buck won the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature in 1938. Following World War II, she started the Pearl S. Buck to help Asian children of U.S. servicemen. In 1967, she gave the foundation most of her money--over $7,000,000. She continued to write a variety of novels, children's stories, short stories, and nonfiction works. She also wrote five novels under the pseudonym of John Sedges. Her biographies include Fighting Angel, a biography of her father, and The Exile, a biography of her mother. In 1950, Buck wrote The Child Who Never Grew (1950), a book about her retarded daughter, and in 1954 she wrote her own autobiography entitled My Several Worlds (1954). Buck's writings are stil widely respected because of their compassionate portrayals of humanity.