| Sui Sin Far / Edith Maude Eaton: A Literary Biography Contributor(s): White-Parks, Annette (Author), Daniels, Roger (Foreword by) |
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ISBN: 0252021134 ISBN-13: 9780252021138 Publisher: University of Illinois Press OUR PRICE: $49.50 Product Type: Hardcover Published: July 1995 Annotation: The first full-length biography of the first published Asian North American fiction writer portrays a gifted, unsung woman and a world rarely seen in anything other than stereotypes. The eldest daughter of a Chinese mother and British father, Edith Maude Eaton was born in England in 1865. Her family moved to Quebec in the early 1870s; 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 she has come to be known by, Sui Sin Far (Water Lily). She lived briefly in Jamaica and then, from 1898 to 1912, in the United States. Today Sui Sin Far is finally being rediscovered as part of American literature and history. She presented portraits of turn-of-the-century Chinese with an insider's sympathy. She gave voice to Chinese American women and children, breaking the stereotypes of silence, invisibility, and "bachelor society". |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Biography & Autobiography | Literary Figures |
| Dewey: B |
| LCCN: 94-6448 |
| Series: Asian American Experience (University of Illinois) |
| Physical Information: 1.18" H x 6.29" W x 9.33" (1.37 lbs) 288 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: The eldest daughter of a Chinese mother and British father, Edith Maude Eaton was born in the United Kingdom 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, Eaton 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 settled in the United States, where she published her one book, Mrs. Spring Fragrance. Annette White-Parks offers the first full-length biography of the woman now remembered as North America's first published Asian writer. White-Parks reveals an author who defied the in vogue style of "yellow peril" literature to show Chinatowns and their inhabitants as complex, feeling human beings. Her insider's sympathy focused in particular on Chinese American women and children. Confronted with social divisions and discrimination, Sui Sin Far experimented with trickster characters and irony, sharing the coping mechanisms used by other writers who struggled to overcome the marginalization forced on them because of their race, gender, or class. |