Sui Sin Far/Edith Maude Eaton: A Literary BiographyThis first full-length biography of the first published Asian North American fiction writer portrays both the woman and her times. The eldest daughter of a Chinese mother and British father, Edith Maude Eaton was born in England in 1865. Her family moved to Quebec, where she was removed from school at age ten to help support her parents and twelve siblings. In the 1880s and 1890s she worked as a stenographer, journalist, and fiction writer in Montreal, often writing under the name Sui Sin Far (Water Lily). She lived briefly in Jamaica and then, from 1898 to 1912, in the United States. Her one book, Mrs. Spring Fragrance, has been out of print since 1914. Today Sui Sin Far is being rediscovered as part of American literature and history. She presented portraits of turn-of-the-century Chinatowns, not in the mode of the "yellow peril" literature in vogue at the time but with an insider's sympathy. She gave voice to Chinese American women and children, and she responded to the social divisions and discrimination that confronted her by experimenting with trickster characters and tools of irony, sharing the coping mechanisms used by other writers who struggled to overcome the marginalization to which their race, class, or gender consigned them in that era. "Superbly researched, thoughtfully reasoned, and beautifully written. . . . Will be the foundation for all future work on Sui Sin Far." -- Elizabeth Ammons, author of Conflicting Stories: American Women Writers at the Turn into the Twentieth Century |
Contents
A Bird on the Wing | 9 |
The Early Writings | 63 |
Pacific Coast Chinatown Stories | 101 |
The Mature Voice and Its Art | 144 |
Mrs Spring Fragrance | 195 |
Common terms and phrases
American Literature Amy Ling Angeles Express Asian American baby British Canada century Charles Laferrière Charles Lummis child China Chinaman Chinatown Chinese American Chinese ancestry Chinese Canadian Chinese immigrants Chinese in America Chinese Lily Chinese North American Chinese women culture Daily Star daughter Dominion Illustrated Eaton family Eaton to Charles Edith Eaton Edith Maude Eaton editor England English Eurasian Far's fiction Far's stories Far's writing father Feminist Fragrance's girl Globe Hochelaga husband Ibid Land of Sunshine Leaves letter literary lives Los Angeles Express Lotus Blossom Magazine marriage marry mission missionaries Montreal Daily Star Montreal Daily Witness mother narrator North America nushu parents Pau Lin Pau Tsu published race racial racist readers Ruthanne Lum McCunn San Francisco Seattle sister society Spring Fragrance stance stereotypes Sui Sin Far's themes Tin-A trickster United voice West Western white American Winifred Women Writers York Yum's