East Wind

Raised within the traditions of an established Chinese family, Kwei-lan has been taught from childhood what is expected of a daughter and a wife. Her marriage has been arranged since before she can remember, and she enters it prepared to follow the customs that have governed generations of her family. But her new husband has spent years studying abroad. A physician influenced by Western ideas, he questions customs Kwei-lan has always accepted and forces her to reconsider what marriage, love, and duty can mean.

As Kwei-lan struggles to bridge the distance between the world in which she was raised and the unfamiliar outlook of her husband, an even greater conflict enters the family. Her brother returns from America having married an American woman, defying the marriage his parents had arranged for him. His decision challenges family loyalty, inheritance, tradition, and the authority of an older generation determined to preserve its way of life.

In East Wind: West Wind, Pearl S. Buck explores cultural change through the intimate lives of husbands, wives, parents, and children. Seen largely through the eyes of a young Chinese woman, the novel examines arranged marriage, the changing position of women, generational conflict, and the collision between Eastern tradition and Western influence. It is an absorbing portrait of people attempting to preserve what they value while adapting to a rapidly changing world.