Anchee Min is the Chinese-American author of Pearl of China (2010), a historical fiction novel that reinterprets the life and influence of Nobel Prize-winning writer Pearl Sydenstricker Buck through her relationship with a fictional best friend named Willow Yee. Reading the historical backdrop of twentieth century China and Pearl S. Buck’s unique position in it through the lens of Emmanuel Levinas’s theory of the self and the Other, I examine the development of Willow’s selfhood through her subsequent relationship with Pearl, and how this relationship influences her relationship to the systems in which she lives. This paper argues that Willow and Pearl’s ‘religious bond’ becomes their strength as they define themselves and maintain each other’s identities against the traditional patriarchy of Qing and Nationalist China, as well as the totalizing forces of communist China under Mao.
I. Towards the Relationship of the Self and Other
II. Development of Willow’s Selfhood
III. Willow and Pearl’s Right to Speak
IV. The Bond of Religion and the Purely Political Being
V. Conclusion
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