University of Toronto Mississauga

Pearl Sydenstricker Buck also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhju , was an American writer who spent most of her time until 1934 in China. Her... novel The Good Earth was the best-selling fiction book in the U.S. in 1931 and 1932, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1932. In 1938, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for her rich and truly epic descriptions of peasant life in China and for her biographical masterpieces." Pearl Buck was born in Hillsboro, West Virginia, to Caroline Stulting and Absalom Sydenstricker. Her parents, Southern Presbyterian missionaries, traveled to China soon after their marriage on July 8, 1880, but returned to the United States for Pearl's birth. When Pearl was three months old, the family returned to China to be stationed first in Zhenjiang . Pearl was raised in a bilingual environment, tutored in English by her mother and in classical Chinese by a Mr. Kung. The Boxer Uprising greatly affected Pearl and family; their Chinese friends deserted them, and Western visitors decreased.
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Aung San Suu Kyi MP AC is a Burmese opposition politician and General Secretary of the National League for Democracy in Burma. In the 1990 general... election, the NLD won 59% of the national votes and 81% of the seats in Parliament. She had, however, already been detained under house arrest before the elections. She remained under house arrest in Burma for almost 15 of the 21 years from 20 July 1989 until her most recent release on 13 November 2010, becoming one of the world's most prominent political prisoners. Suu Kyi received the Rafto Prize and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1990 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. In 1992 she was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding by the government of India and the International Simón Bolívar Prize from the government of Venezuela. In 2007, the Government of Canada made her an honorary citizen of that country; at the time, she was one of only four people ever to receive the honor. In 2011, she was awarded the Wallenberg Medal.
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Henri-Louis Bergson was a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many thinkers... that immediate experience and intuition are more significant than rationalism and science for understanding reality. He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his rich and vitalizing ideas and the brilliant skill with which they have been presented". Bergson was born in the Rue Lamartine in Paris, not far from the Palais Garnier in 1859 . His father, the pianist Michał Bergson, was of a Polish Jewish family background . His mother, Katherine Levison, daughter of a Yorkshire doctor, was from an English and Irish Jewish background. The Bereksohns were a famous Jewish entrepreneurial family of Polish descent.
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Bertrand Russell is an actor.