Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Exile | 1936 | Pearl S. Buck | Buy |
| 2 | Fighting Angel: Portrait of a Soul | 1937 | Pearl S. Buck | Buy |
| 3 | The Chinese Novel | 1939 | Pearl S. Buck | Buy |
| 4 | Of Men and Women | 1941 | Pearl S. Buck | Buy |
| 5 | Freedom for India Now! | 1942 | Pearl S. Buck | Buy |
| 6 | The Child Who Never Grew | 1950 | Pearl S. Buck | Buy |
| 7 | American Argument | 1950 | Pearl S. Buck | Buy |
| 8 | My Several Worlds | 1954 | Pearl S. Buck | Buy |
| 9 | Tell the People: Talks with James Yen About the Mass Educational Movement | 1959 | Pearl S. Buck | Buy |
| 10 | A Bridge for Passing | 1962 | Pearl S. Buck | Buy |
| 11 | Joy of Children | 1964 | Pearl S. Buck | Buy |
| 12 | The People of Japan | 1966 | Pearl S. Buck | Buy |
| 13 | For Spacious Skies | 1966 | Pearl S. Buck | Buy |
| 14 | The Kennedy Women | 1970 | Pearl S. Buck | Buy |
| 15 | Pearl Buck’s America | 1971 | Pearl S. Buck | Buy |
| 16 | China As I See It | 1971 | Pearl S. Buck | Buy |
| 17 | China Past and Present | 1972 | Pearl S. Buck | Buy |
| 18 | American Unity and Asia | 1972 | Pearl S. Buck | Buy |
| 19 | Pearl S. Buck’s Oriental Cookbook | 1972 | Pearl S. Buck | Buy |
| 20 | What America Means to Me | 1973 | Pearl S. Buck | Buy |
| 21 | Argument Argument | 2007 | Pearl S. Buck | Buy |
| 22 | New Evidence of the Militarization of America | 2011 | Pearl S. Buck | Buy |
| 23 | How It Happens | 2012 | Pearl S. Buck | Buy |
Pearl S. Buck’s non-fiction is as varied as her fiction. The Exile and Fighting Angel (both 1936–37) are biographies of her parents, written with enough emotional honesty to work as literature alongside memoir. My Several Worlds (1954) is her autobiography. The Child Who Never Grew (1950) addressed her daughter Carol’s intellectual disability at a time when that subject was almost never discussed publicly, and its candor had a measurable effect on how intellectual disability was perceived and talked about in mid-century America.
Her cultural and political essays — Of Men and Women, For Spacious Skies, China Past and Present — show a writer engaged with the largest questions of her era: American race relations, the position of women, Asia policy. Some of the later non-fiction titles in the collection are more ephemeral, but the best of Buck’s essays hold up alongside her fiction as serious thinking about the world she inhabited.