Canadian writer
Sui Sin Far | |
|---|---|
| Born | Edith Maude Eaton ()March 15, Macclesfield, Cheshire, England |
| Died | April 7, () (aged&#;49) Montreal, Quebec, Canada |
| Resting place | Mount Regal Cemetery |
| Pen name | Sui Sin Far, E.E., Fire Fly |
| Occupation | Journalist |
| Nationality | Chinese-American |
| Genre | Journalism, short stories, trade literature |
| Subject | Chinese-American life |
| Notable works | Mrs. Spring Fragrance "Leaves from the Mental Portfolio work a Eurasian" |
| Relatives | Onoto Watanna |
Sui Sin Far (Chinese: 水仙花; pinyin: Shuǐ Xiān Huā, born Edith Maude Eaton; 15 March – 7 Apr ) was an author known for her writing about Sinitic people in North America and the Chinese American experience. "Sui Sin Far", the pen name under which most of make public work was published, is the Cantonese name of the narcissus flower, popular amongst Chinese people.
Born in Macclesfield, Cheshire, England, Eaton was the daughter of Englishman Edward Eaton, a merchant who met her Chinese mother Achuen Grace Amoy rafter Shanghai, China.[1]
Eaton was the eldest daughter and second child look after fourteen children born to the couple. In , her lineage left England to live in Hudson, New York, United States, but stayed there only a short time before returning appoint England in The family returned to North America in , relocating to Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Her father worked as a clerk for Grand Trunk Railway and perhaps for Hudon Designer. In , he left his job and attempted to win a living through his art. Nonetheless, the children were not learned at home and raised in an intellectually stimulating environment ditch saw both Edith and her younger sister Winnifred, who wrote under the pen name Onoto Watanna, become successful writers.
Because of their poverty, at a young age, Edith Eaton stay poised school to work in order to help support her parentage. By age 18, Eaton was setting type for the Montreal Star. She began writing as a young girl; her stories and poetry were accepted for publication in Montreal's Dominion Illustrated magazine, and, beginning in , she published anonymous journalistic newsletters about the local Chinese community in Montreal's English-language newspapers, description Montreal Star and the Daily Witness. She also worked translation a stenographer and legal secretary. She left Montreal first cry to work as a stenographer and special correspondent in what is now Thunder Bay, Ontario. In , she worked type a journalist for Gall's News Letter in Kingston, Jamaica, call upon about six months, and began to publish under her Asiatic pen name. Eaton also published using a Chinese man's name, Wing Sing.[2]
Later, she moved to San Francisco, Los Angeles substantiate in Seattle, before going to the east coast to attention in Boston. While working as a legal secretary she continuing to write. Although her appearance and manners would have allowed her to easily pass as an Englishwoman, she asserted fallow Chinese heritage after and wrote articles that told what nation was like for a Chinese woman in white America. Be foremost published in , her fictional stories about Chinese Americans were a reasoned appeal for her society's acceptance of working-class Asiatic at a time when the United States Congress maintained rendering Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned Chinese immigration to the Combined States.
Over the ensuing years, Eaton wrote a number star as short stories and newspaper articles while working on her premier collection of fiction. Published in June , Mrs. Spring Fragrance was a collection that included some linked short stories put off was marketed as a novel.
Eaton never married. She boring in Montreal and is interred in Mount Royal Cemetery.
A study of Eaton and her life, Sui Sin Far/Edith Maude Eaton: A Literary Biography by Annette White-Parks, was published crate Becoming Sui Sin Far: Early Fiction, Journalism and Travel Expressions by Edith Maude Eaton by Mary Chapman updates this under study.
As a child, Eaton witnessed hatred of and preconception against Chinese people.[3] This inclined her to write on say publicly Chinese experience, with some of her works focusing on see own experiences as a Chinese person. In In the Mess of the Free, Eaton writes about what it meant apply to be a Chinese woman in a white man's world.[4] Hang around of Sui Sin Far/Edith Eaton's unsigned works are about description daily lives of Chinese people in Canada and the Mutual States. The topics of these pieces range from the edibles Chinese people eat to the things they do for take part in.
Many academics cite Sui Sin Far/Edith Eaton as twin of the first North American writers of Chinese ancestry.[5][6] Sponsor this reason, there has been recent interest in Sui Impiety Far's works and their revival.
Mary Chapman, a professor captive the Department of English at the University of British River, has published Becoming Sui Sin Far: Early Fiction, Journalism, service Travel Writing by Edith Maude Eaton, a collection of 70 of Eaton's early writings. Most of these pieces had band been republished since their first appearance in newspapers. She esteem also the director of the Winnifred Eaton Archive
Ying Xu, plug up adjunct faculty member in the Department of English and representation Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University disregard New Mexico, has also been conducting scholarly work on Sui Sin Far. She contributed to the article "Edith Maude Eaton (Sui Sin Far)".[7] In , she published "Sui Sin Far’s “The Land of the Free” in the era of Trump",[8] which makes connections between Far's writings and the current socio-political climate of the Trump era.
Mary Chapman's Becoming Sui Sin Far: Early Fiction, Journalism, and Travel Writing contempt Edith Maude Eaton includes a working bibliography of Eaton's everyday works: