Sui Sin Far was the pen name of Edith Maude Eaton, oldest sister of Winnifred Eaton. Together they made history as the first Asian-American women writers. Maude was born in England in 1865 to a British father and Chinese mother. The family moved to Hudson, New York and then to Montreal, Quebec, when Maude was still a child. Maude Eaton died in Montreal in 1914.
Fiction
Mrs. Spring Fragrance
Edited by Hsuan L. Hsu.
Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press, 2011.
PS8487.U44 M77 2011
The novel Mrs. Spring Fragrance was first published: Chicago: A.C. McClurg, 1912.
Publisher’s Synopsis (from its website)
Among the first works of fiction in English by a North American writer of Asian descent, the stories collected in Mrs. Spring Fragrance present a complex and sympathetic picture of life in American Chinese communities in the early twentieth century. Far’s seemingly simple stories of family life reveal the tensions created by cultural assimilation. Rather than embracing any particular identity, the stories show a cosmopolitan sensibility that embraces “the motley throng of all nationalities” in the streets of San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Appendices include materials on Chinese exclusion, missionaries and assimilation, and contemporary representations of Chinatown.
Fiction
Mrs. Spring Fragrance and Other Writings
Edited by Amy Ling and Annette White-Parks.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995.
PS8487 .U5 M77 1995
The novel Mrs. Spring Fragrance was first published: Chicago: A.C. McClurg, 1912.
Publisher’s Synopsis (from its website)
This volume reprints stories from Mrs. Spring Fragrance, along with other previously uncollected stories and journalistic essays by the first published Asian North American fiction writer.
During an era of extreme Sinophobia, the Eurasian Sui Sin Far (1865-1914) courageously chose to write of the Chinese in North America as humorous, tragic, charming, and loving–in short, as human. Her stories sympathetically portray a group caught between worlds, inheritors of traditional Chinese values who find themselves thrust into boomingly mercantile and extremely race-conscious cities, such as San Francisco, Seattle, New York, and Montreal, at the turn of the last century.
Anthology (Fiction and Prose)
Becoming Sui Sin Far: Early Fiction, Journalism and Travel Writing by Edith Maude Eaton
Edited by Mary Chapman.
Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016.
PS8487 .U44 A6 2016
Publisher’s Synopsis (from its website)
Becoming Sui Sin Far collects and contextualizes seventy of Eaton’s early works, most of which have not been republished since they first appeared in turn-of-the-century periodicals. These works of fiction and journalism, in diverse styles and from a variety of perspectives, document Eaton’s early career as a short story writer, “stunt-girl” journalist, ethnographer, political commentator, and travel writer. Showcasing her playful humour, savage wit, and deep sympathy, the texts included in this volume assert a significant place for Eaton in North American literary history. Mary Chapman’s introduction provides an insightful and readable overview of Eaton’s transnational career. The volume also includes an expanded bibliography that lists over two hundred and sixty works attributed to Eaton, a detailed biographical timeline, and a newly discovered interview with Eaton from the year in which she first adopted the orientalist pseudonym for which she is best known..
Selected Criticism and Interpretation
Arab, Teresa Fernandez. “Cultural Identity Revisited: Early Twentieth-century Women’s Work of Cultural Preservation (Maria Cristina Mena, Humishuma, Sui Sin Far and The Daughters of Hawai’i).” Ph.D. diss., University of Kansas, 2007.
Available from Proquest Dissertations and Theses
Beauregard, Guy. “Reclaiming Sui Sin Far.” In Re/collecting Early Asian America: Essays in Cultural History, eds. Josephine Lee, Imogene L. Lim, and Yuko Matsukawa. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002.
E184 .A75 R43 2002
But, Juanita. “The Other Race: Settler, Exile, Transient and Sojourner in the Literary Diaspora.” Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Buffalo, 1999.
Available from Proquest Dissertations and Theses
Chapman, Mary. “Edith Eaton/Sui Sin Far’s Revolutions in Ink: Print Cultural Alternatives to U.S. Suffrage Discourse.” Chap. in her: Making Noise, Making News: Suffrage Print Culture and US Modernism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Z473 .C472014
Chiu, Monica Elizabeth. “Illness and Self-representation in Asian-American Literature by Women.” Ph.D. diss., Emory University, 1996.
Available from Proquest Dissertations and Theses
Ferens, Dominika. Edith and Winnifred Eaton: Chinatown Missions and Japanese Romances. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2002.
PS8487 .U5 Z68 2002
Gruber, Laura Katherine. “Unstable Geographies: Context, Representation and Ideology in American Western Writing, 1885-1927.” Ph.D. diss., Washington State University, 2005.
Available from Proquest Dissertations and Theses
Heidenreich, Rosmarin. “Hybrid Identities: The Eaton Sisters” In her Literary Imposters: Canadian Autofiction of the Early Twentieth Century. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018, p. 202-255.
PS8185 .A88 H45 2018
Hodges, Anita Polunga. “Collective Visions of Women: Representations of Gender and Race in the Writings of Women of Color: 1900-1940.” Ph.D. diss., University of Hawai’i, 1998.
Available from Proquest Dissertations and Theses
Leighton, Joy Marc. “Ishmael in the Promised Land: Exile and Ethics in Nineteenth-century America.” Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Buffalo, 2000.
Available from Proquest Dissertations and Theses
Li, Zhen. “Unsettling Women: Contemporary Diasporic Chinese Women’s Writing.” Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Buffalo, 2012.
Available from Proquest Dissertations and Theses
Ouyang, Huining. “(Re)presenting Interracial Sexuality: Race, Sex and Discursive Strategies in Sui Sin Far and Onoto Watanna.” Ph.D. diss., Purdue University, 1998.
Available from Proquest Dissertations and Theses
Shih, David. “Representation and Exceptionalism in the Asian American Autobiography ” Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1999.
Available from Proquest Dissertations and Theses
Spaulding, Carol Vivian. “Blue-eyed Asians: Eurasianism in the work of Edith Eaton/Sui Sin Far, Winnifred Eaton/Onoto Watanna, and Diana Chan.” Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1996.
Available from Proquest Dissertations and Theses
Teng, Emma Jinhua. “The Easton Sisters and the Figure of the Eurasian” In The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature, eds. Rajini Srikanth and Min Hyoung Song. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016, 88-103.
PS153 .A84 C36 2016
Tirado-Gilligan, Heather. “The Form of Fulfillment: Race, Genre and Imperialism in American Periodical Culture, 1880-1910.” Ph.D. diss., The State University of New Jersey – New Brunswick, 2004.
Available from Proquest Dissertations and Theses
Vogel, Todd William. “Staging Race and Sabotaging Whiteness: Marginalized Writers Redirect the Mainstream.” Ph.D. diss., The University of Texas at Austin, 1999.
Available from Proquest Dissertations and Theses
Wang, Jianhui. “Sexual Politics in the Works of Chinese American Women Writers: Sui Sin Far, Maxine Hong Kingston, and Amy Tan.” Ph.D. diss., Indiana University of Pennsylvania, 2007.
Available from Proquest Dissertations and Theses
White-Parks, Annette. Sui Sin Far / Edith Maude Eaton: A Literary Biography. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995.
FC3067.2 .W45 1995
Yang, Caroline Hyo Jung. “Reconstruction’s Labor: The Asian Worker in Narratives of United States Culture and History, 1890-1930.” Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 2007.
Available from Proquest Dissertations and Theses
Yimwilai, Supaporn. “Beyond the Binary: Resistance Strategies in the Writings of Sui Sin Far and Onoto Watanna.” Ph.D. diss., University of Delaware, 2002.
Available from Proquest Dissertations and Theses
Links
Publisher Broadview Press
Publisher McGill-Queen’s University Press
Publisher University of Illinois Press