This is a prayer for love 'cause I'm not sleeping
I have just finished reading Edith Maude Eaton/Sui Sin Far's Mrs. Spring Fragrance (1912). It is the kind of collection that can be picked up with no prior knowledge and that also makes me want a couple of degrees in literature and cultural studies to discuss both the stories and their transcultural, transnational author as they deserve. Eaton was Chinese-British by birth, grew up mostly in Canada, and spent the majority of her adulthood in the U.S. where her fiction and journalism focused on Chinese-American communities at the time of the Chinese Exclusion Act; she took her Cantonese pen name from the narcissus flower of the Lunar New Year. The stories collected in Mrs. Spring Fragrance are as boundary-crossing as their author, employing the conventions of sentimental fiction to tackle questions as topical and realistic as institutional racism, assimilation, and cultural appreciation vs. appropriation, intended for the readership of a white audience at the same time as they decenter whiteness; they are trickster stories, talking from the edges of things, documents and arguments at the same time. There are layers on layers in the title story, but I was struck by the fact that its co-protagonist is a Chinese man who is the farthest thing imaginable from a desexualized or inscrutable stereotype, deeply in love after five years of arranged marriage and suddenly panicking that his more assimilated wife might no longer feel the same way: "If his wife was becoming an American woman, would it not be possible for her to love as an American woman—a man to whom she was not married?" Meanwhile, the Chinese women in these stories may be housewifely, but they are not submissive, and when they're strong-willed, they're not dragon ladies, either. It's so matter-of-fact and it's the kind of representation this country is still resisting. Much of the topicality still has teeth. From the opening lines of "Tian Shan's Kindred Spirit" and the Department of Plus Ça Change, Plus Ça God Damn It:
Had Tian Shan been an American and China to him a forbidden country, his daring exploits and thrilling adventures would have furnished inspiration for many a newspaper and magazine article, novel, and short story. As a hero, he would certainly have far outshone Dewey, Peary, or Cook. Being, however, a Chinese, and the forbidden country America, he was simply recorded by the American press as "a wily Oriental, who 'by ways that are dark and tricks that are vain,' is eluding the vigilance of our brave customs officers."
More power to him and his equally tricky kindred spirit Fin Fan, who turns the the authority of borders back on themselves in order to be reunited with rather than separated from the man she loves. It's more devastating that a story like "In the Land of the Free" hasn't gone out of style since 1909, since that one concerns a child separated, detained, and perhaps ultimately stolen from his parents on a pretext of papers out of order; perhaps the cruelty has always been the point. The difficulties facing the interracial couple in "The Story of One White Woman Who Married a Chinese" and "Her Chinese Husband" are not ascribed merely to personal or community prejudices, but to the matrix of white supremacy in which their relationship is embedded:
There was the continual uncertainty about his own life here in America, the constant irritation caused by the assumption of the white men that a white woman does not love her Chinese husband, and their actions accordingly; also sneers and offensive remarks. There was also on Liu Kanghi's side an acute consciousness that, though belonging to him as his wife, yet in a sense I was not his, but of the dominant race, which claimed, even while it professed to despise me.
Eaton herself never married; despite the pressure, then as now, for marginalized narratives to be authentic, ethnographic, confessional, none of her fiction seems to be autobiographical beyond its essentially intersectional concerns. The closest this collection might come is a sort of negative manifesto in "Its Wavering Image," in which a charming white reporter romantically exploits a biracial girl in San Francisco's Chinatown in order to perpetuate in his "special-feature article" exactly the kind of sensationalist, Orientalist misrepresentations Eaton was working to overwrite and the last sting of his betrayal is that his racially anxious gaze forces the heroine to renounce her mixed identity; it serves him right that she chooses despite his protestations of her whiteness to identify as Chinese, but for Eaton who valued her ambiguous position, who once declared, "I have no nationality and am not anxious to claim any," that the choice is demanded at all is presented as tragedy.
Also in this collection you get a bunch of animal fables and stories for children, including a delightful and subtle one about the power of storytelling, featuring the imagined adventures of a cat. I may well try to get hold of Mary Chapman's Becoming Sui Sin Far: Early Fiction, Journalism, and Travel Writing by Edith Maude Eaton (2016) even though Porter Square Books says its availability is "It's Complicated." I was already curious about her other writing, but there's an excerpt from her newspaper series "The Chinese in America" (1909) included in the excellent appendices of this edition that makes me want to read the rest of the interviews stat:
"I think," said Go Ek Ju, "that when I return to China I will write a book about the American people."
"What put such an idea into your head?" I asked.
"The number of books about the Chinese by Americans," answered Go Ek Ju. "I see them in the library; they are very amusing."
"See, then, that when you write your book, it is likewise amusing."
"No," said Go Ek Ju. "My aim, when I write a book about Americans will be to make it not amusing, but interesting and instructive. The poor Americans have to content themselves with writing for amusement only because they have no means of obtaining any true knowledge of the Chinese when in China; but we Chinese in America have fine facilities for learning all about the Americans. We go into the American houses as servants; we enter the American schools and colleges as students; we ask questions and we think about what we hear and see. Where is there the American who will go to China and enter into the service of a Chinese family as a domestic? We have yet to hear about a band of American youths, both male and female, being admitted as students into a Chinese university."
I had never heard of the author before![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer mentioned her last month in context of reading a novel by her sister. I am glad she has been rediscovered enough for critical editions and biographies. I look forward to finding out who else has been out there for more than a century that I don't know.
Had Tian Shan been an American and China to him a forbidden country, his daring exploits and thrilling adventures would have furnished inspiration for many a newspaper and magazine article, novel, and short story. As a hero, he would certainly have far outshone Dewey, Peary, or Cook. Being, however, a Chinese, and the forbidden country America, he was simply recorded by the American press as "a wily Oriental, who 'by ways that are dark and tricks that are vain,' is eluding the vigilance of our brave customs officers."
More power to him and his equally tricky kindred spirit Fin Fan, who turns the the authority of borders back on themselves in order to be reunited with rather than separated from the man she loves. It's more devastating that a story like "In the Land of the Free" hasn't gone out of style since 1909, since that one concerns a child separated, detained, and perhaps ultimately stolen from his parents on a pretext of papers out of order; perhaps the cruelty has always been the point. The difficulties facing the interracial couple in "The Story of One White Woman Who Married a Chinese" and "Her Chinese Husband" are not ascribed merely to personal or community prejudices, but to the matrix of white supremacy in which their relationship is embedded:
There was the continual uncertainty about his own life here in America, the constant irritation caused by the assumption of the white men that a white woman does not love her Chinese husband, and their actions accordingly; also sneers and offensive remarks. There was also on Liu Kanghi's side an acute consciousness that, though belonging to him as his wife, yet in a sense I was not his, but of the dominant race, which claimed, even while it professed to despise me.
Eaton herself never married; despite the pressure, then as now, for marginalized narratives to be authentic, ethnographic, confessional, none of her fiction seems to be autobiographical beyond its essentially intersectional concerns. The closest this collection might come is a sort of negative manifesto in "Its Wavering Image," in which a charming white reporter romantically exploits a biracial girl in San Francisco's Chinatown in order to perpetuate in his "special-feature article" exactly the kind of sensationalist, Orientalist misrepresentations Eaton was working to overwrite and the last sting of his betrayal is that his racially anxious gaze forces the heroine to renounce her mixed identity; it serves him right that she chooses despite his protestations of her whiteness to identify as Chinese, but for Eaton who valued her ambiguous position, who once declared, "I have no nationality and am not anxious to claim any," that the choice is demanded at all is presented as tragedy.
Also in this collection you get a bunch of animal fables and stories for children, including a delightful and subtle one about the power of storytelling, featuring the imagined adventures of a cat. I may well try to get hold of Mary Chapman's Becoming Sui Sin Far: Early Fiction, Journalism, and Travel Writing by Edith Maude Eaton (2016) even though Porter Square Books says its availability is "It's Complicated." I was already curious about her other writing, but there's an excerpt from her newspaper series "The Chinese in America" (1909) included in the excellent appendices of this edition that makes me want to read the rest of the interviews stat:
"I think," said Go Ek Ju, "that when I return to China I will write a book about the American people."
"What put such an idea into your head?" I asked.
"The number of books about the Chinese by Americans," answered Go Ek Ju. "I see them in the library; they are very amusing."
"See, then, that when you write your book, it is likewise amusing."
"No," said Go Ek Ju. "My aim, when I write a book about Americans will be to make it not amusing, but interesting and instructive. The poor Americans have to content themselves with writing for amusement only because they have no means of obtaining any true knowledge of the Chinese when in China; but we Chinese in America have fine facilities for learning all about the Americans. We go into the American houses as servants; we enter the American schools and colleges as students; we ask questions and we think about what we hear and see. Where is there the American who will go to China and enter into the service of a Chinese family as a domestic? We have yet to hear about a band of American youths, both male and female, being admitted as students into a Chinese university."
I had never heard of the author before
osprey_archer mentioned her last month in context of reading a novel by her sister. I am glad she has been rediscovered enough for critical editions and biographies. I look forward to finding out who else has been out there for more than a century that I don't know.
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I really enjoyed it!
And yeah, I've never heard of either her or her sister. I'll definitely have to check out their works.
According to editor Hsuan L. Hsu, whose introduction and choice of supplementary materials are terrifically illuminating, Eaton/Far was almost entirely forgotten in the decades following the publication of Mrs. Spring Fragrance; it didn't help that she died in 1914. The editors of Aiiieeeee! An Anthology of Asian-American Writers (1974) recognized her as a vital forebear, but her literary reputation did not really revive until the '90's, since which time there has been increasing scholarly attention to her work. The definitive bio still looks like Annette White-Parks' Sui Sin Far / Edith Maude Eaton: A Literary Biography (1995), which I should probably also get a hold of. I don't know if I would have encountered her sooner if my knowledge of Asian-American literature were better beyond SFF and YA.
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Highly recommended! Even the stories that did not resonate as strongly with me had something in them to think about, which is really what I want out of art.
I've read one book by her sister, which was not nearly as interesting.
Which one? I have read none.
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These sisters really do seem remarkable--but there's the rub: there is never any shortage of intelligent, perceptive, marginalized people, just a dearth of voices raising their stories. SO glad that you and
I love that the collection contains fables and stories for children too--marvelous! I think I like the sound of this collection more than I liked the sound of the Japanese-flavored one Osprey Archer wrote about. Is
The quote about being claimed by the culture that professes to despise you was powerful.
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Hsuan L. Hsu in his introduction mentions that she wrote a novel which was rejected by A.C. McClurg—who published Mrs. Spring Fragrance—and the manuscript has never been located, which is the sort of thing that just makes you want to reach through time and shake the relevant editor until his eyes rattle.
SO glad that you and osprey_archer are raising yours.
I love that the collection contains fables and stories for children too--marvelous!
The first half of the collection is adult fiction, also titled "Mrs. Spring Fragrance," the second half is "Tales of Chinese Children." Hsu suggests that Eaton/Far may have envisioned her implicit audience of middle-class white women reading the first half themselves and then sharing the second half with their children.
I think I like the sound of this collection more than I liked the sound of the Japanese-flavored one Osprey Archer wrote about.
I did sort of bounce off the report of the love quadrangle going down in flames. I am fascinated by Winnifred Eaton's passing for Japanese, though, because of what it says about the zero-sum games of whiteness: who's exotic and hot, who's unassimilable and not, and how long the favor will last.
The quote about being claimed by the culture that professes to despise you was powerful.
There are lines like that all through the collection. Some of the stories worked better for me than others, but something is always real.
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I read the book because I was curious about it, especially after reading the title story and the author's autobiographical essay, and I regret absolutely nothing.
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You're welcome! I'm glad to be able to. I'm glad such thoughtful editions of her work exist.
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You're welcome! I am glad her work is available to be pointed toward, as opposed to all the movies where I just have to shrug in the direction of TCM.
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Yay!
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Me, too! I am certainly benefiting from it. She must have looked like a lost lighthouse to the Asian-American writers who recovered her in the '70's.
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You're welcome!
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Understood.
Were you told about her or did you run across her on your own time?
Glad of your posts, even so.
Thank you.
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Probably
either Project Gutenberg ora chance ref in grad school. I think I knew of her life and work before my libstaff job, which is of relevant timeframe.Edited: PG doesn't list her as an author. That said, there's a decent chance I first saw her name mentioned in the foreword/etc. to someone else's work.
Edited further: I've read a recent monograph (published soon before I left the libstaff job) that has a chapter on Yung Wing. I wonder whether either of his children wrote.