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COLLECTION Identifier: A/Y20

Mamoru Yamaguchi Collection on Ida Pruitt, 1986-1997, undated

Overview

Letters, photographs, and notes about Ida Pruitt compiled by Professor Mamoru Yamaguchi while researching Pruitt's life and work.

Dates

  • Creation: 1986-1997
  • Creation: Undated

Creator

Language of Materials

Materials in English.

Access Restrictions:

Access. Collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright. Copyright in the papers created by Marmoru Yamaguch as well as copyright in other papers in the collection may be held by their authors, or the authors' heirs or assigns.

Copying. Papers may be copied in accordance with the library's usual procedures.

Extent

1 folder

The collection includes papers about Ida Pruitt compiled by Professor Mamoru Yamaguchi while researching Pruitt's life and work. It includes Yamaguchi's notes about missionary schools in Yantai, Shandong, as well as notes taken from a local history of Huangxian, Shandong Province, where the Pruitt family lived for many years (the local history was displayed in the Shandong Provincial Museum in Jinan, Shandong). In addition, there are photocopies of photographs of missionary schools in Yantai (then called Chefoo); a photocopy of a letter from Pruitt to Wilma Fairbank in which she describes her translation method in working with the Chinese writer Lao She (original dated 1977); a photocopy of a letter from the transcriber of the Chinese translation of a book by Helen Foster Snow to Snow about Ida Pruitt (original dated 1988); and a photocopy of an interview with a student of Reverend C.W. Pruitt, Ida Pruitt's father (original undated). There is also a copy of The Chefoo Magazine, published in 1986 (Volume 29, Number 2) by the Cheefoo Schools Association, as well as a copy of a Chinese language article by Yamaguchi and Professor Cheng Ma. The article was published in 1997 in a journal called Zhuanzi Wenxue (Biographical Studies). The collection also includes copies of three photographs, including a group portrait of the Department of Social Services at the Peking Union Medical College.

BIOGRAPHY OF MAMORU YAMAGUCHI

Mamoru Yamaguchi is a professor in the Department of Chinese Language and Culture, College of Humanities and Sciences, at Nihon University in Tokyo, Japan. He is writing a biography about Ida Pruitt.

BIOGRAPHY OF IDA PRUITT

Writer, educator, and social worker Ida Pruitt was born in China on December 2, 1888, the daughter of Southern Baptist missionaries Cicero Washington and Anna Seward Pruitt. She spent the first twelve years of her life in Hwanghsien, a village in Shantung province. She attended Cox College in College Park, Georgia (1906-1909), received a BS from Columbia University Teachers' College (1910) and studied social work in Boston and Philadelphia. Pruitt returned to China as teacher and principal of Wai Ling School for girls in Chefoo (1912-1918); the Rockefeller Foundation later appointed her chief of the Department of Social Services, Peking Union Medical College (1921-1939). During the Japanese occupation she and social reformer Rewi Alley organized Chinese Industrial Cooperatives (CIC), an international committee that worked to promote Chinese self-sufficiency. She served as executive secretary (1939-1952) of Indusco, the American fundraising arm for the CIC. She was the author and translator of a number of books, including Daughter of Han: The Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman (1945), Yellow Storm (1951), and China Childhood (1978). Pruitt died in Philadelphia on July 24, 1985; she was survived by two adopted daughters, Kuei-ching Ho and Tania (Cosman) Wahl.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Accession number: 2022-M97

The Mamoru Yamaguchi Collection on Ida Pruitt was given to the Schlesinger Library by Marmoru Yamaguchi in 2022.

Related Material:

There is related material at the Schlesinger Library; see Ida Pruitt Papers, 1850s-1992 (MC 465) and Ida Pruitt and Marjorie King Papers, 1891-1994 (MC 701).

Processing Information

Processed: July 2022

By: Paula Aloisio

The Schlesinger Library attempts to provide a basic level of preservation and access for all collections, and does more extensive processing of higher priority collections as time and resources permit.  Finding aids may be updated periodically to account for new acquisitions to the collection and/or revisions in arrangement and description.

Author
Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America
Language of description
eng
Sponsor
Processing of this collection was made possible by gifts from the Class of 1957 Schlesinger Library Fund and the Kim A. Bendheim Fund.
EAD ID
sch02157

Repository Details

Part of the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute Repository

The preeminent research library on the history of women in the United States, the Schlesinger Library documents women's lives from the past and present for the future. In addition to its traditional strengths in the history of feminisms, women’s health, and women’s activism, the Schlesinger collections document the intersectional workings of race and ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class in American history.

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