Disability History Fact: Pearl S. Buck

The American Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Pearl S. Buck, best known as the author of The Good Earth, also helped to raise awareness of the challenges faced by people with intellectual disabilities. It was her experiences with her own daughter that led Buck down a path that helped shape the future for people with intellectual disabilities.

 

Buck’s daughter, Carol, was born with a metabolic disorder called phenylketonuria, or PKU. Left untreated, the blood stream of children with PKU accrues high levels of unsynthesized phenylalanine, an amino acid resulting in, among other symptoms, cognitive disability as a function of neural damage.

 

In 1932, Buck donated $50,000 to the Vineland Training School in New Jersey, where Carol was a resident, for the construction and maintenance of a cottage, called Carol’s Cottage, on the campus. She was also long-time member of the board of directors for the Training School and, even after her death in 1973, her contribution to the school was carried on by her other daughter, Janice, who became Carol’s guardian and an active member of the Vineland board of directors.

 

As important as Pearl Buck was to the Vineland Training School, it was her impact on other parents of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities for which she is most remembered by disability advocates. In an article in the Ladies Home Journal in May, 1950, titled “The Child Who Never Grew,” Buck told the story of her daughter. Later that year, the article was reprinted as a book by John Day Publishing, and it was condensed for inclusion in the September 1950 issue of The Reader’s Digest.

Adapted from:

http://archive.brookespublishing.com/documents/the-story-of-intellectual-disability.pdf