68 Sui Sin Far (Edith Maude Eaton) (1865-1914)
Colleen Tripp
Introduction
Edith Maude Eaton, known alternatively by her pen-name Sui Sin Far or Sui Seen Far, was an author, journalist, and activist in the late nineteenth century. Born in England in 1865, Eaton was one of two daughters to English silk merchant Edward Eaton and his wife, Grace “Lotus Blossom” Trefusis. Edward met his wife, Grace, a Chinese woman adopted by American missionaries, while conducting business in China (White-Parks 10). In 1873, the Eaton family relocated to Canada for her father’s work. As a young woman, Edith Eaton began her literary career in Montreal, but eventually left Canada to pursue her writing career in the United States. She lived in Seattle and Boston, self-identifying as Chinese-Anglo “Sui Sin Far” while writing short sketches of the Chinese experience in North America for a number of nineteenth-century magazines, including the Overland Monthly, the Land of Sunshine, and Out West (White-Parks 9). Her pen name, Sui Sin Far, translates to “Narcissus Flower” in Cantonese, which is a favored flower in China.
Eaton achieved a substantial readership during her lifetime. She faced discrimination in the late-nineteenth-century publishing industry as a mixed-race woman writing about the minority experience, but she successfully published more than a dozen short stories and articles between 1890 and 1915. In 1909, for example, she published Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian, which is a short autobiographical essay detailing her childhood and life experiences with racism. She also wrote a number of stories for children, such as “Pat and Pan” and “A Chinese Boy-Girl,” which explore the childhood experience of being brought up in “two worlds:” Chinese and American cultures.
Edith Eaton compiled her life’s work in her one and only short story collection, Mrs. Spring Fragrance, which was reviewed by the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Independent, and the Montreal Weekly, among others (White-Parks 200-2). Published in June 1912, Mrs. Spring Fragrance is a motley collection of comic, tragic, and satirical stories illustrating the tensions of Chinese Americans in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. Her book is divided into two sections: “Mrs. Spring Fragrance” and “Tales of Chinese Children.” The first section focuses on adult fictions, named after the protagonist of the namesake tale, Mrs. Spring Fragrance. The second section focuses on a mix of stories about children and stories for children. The title story, “Mrs. Spring Fragrance,” depicts the misadventures of first-generation Chinese American, Jade Spring Fragrance, who plays matchmaker to her second-generation Chinese American friends, Laura Chin Yuen (or Mai Gwi Far) and Kai Tzu. Laura’s more conservative first generation Chinese American parents have already arranged Laura’s marriage to the Chinese government schoolmaster’s son, Man You, and they are displeased with Kai Tzu’s A