1.Read the Class Reader materials on Sui Sin Far  

2.it is a regular written critique,   Focus on Sui Sin Far’s different portrayals of Chinese women and Caucasian women. 

3.at least 2 pages

5A AAS322 – #5A March 3 MK Hom

I

Early Chinese American Short Stories

During the first decade of 1900s, Chinatown in San Francisco, despite the devastating
aftermath of the 1906 earthquake and fire that totally destroyed The City, was bustling
with Cantonese rhymes publications with three anthologies of rhymes. Since these
rhymes were written in vernacular Cantonese Chinese, it was basically for the internal
audience of Cantonese immigrants and the genre was unknown beyond the confine of
the Chinatown enclave. During that time, there was hardly any literary works in the
English language from Chinese America writers, except for one Euro-Asian woman
writer in the West Coast.

Let’s examine the fictional narratives in the English language by this early Chinese
American writer in that same (Gold Mountain Rhymes) time period. It was a rarity in the
American literary scene during the Chinese Exclusion period (1882-1943) when social
and cultural segregations were the institutionalized norms.

In the 1890s, this rather unique frontier woman writer emerged in America’s West
Coast literary circle that was dominated by men with mostly anti-Chinese narratives.
She wrote short stories focusing on the Chinese American community and family lives
in Seattle and San Francisco. This short story writer was a biracial Chinese American

woman named Edith Eaton who published under a pseudonym of Sui Sin Far 水仙花
(“Water Lily”), a popular floral symbol of, elegance, refinement and sophistication of
Chinese culture during that time period.

Eaton’s father, an Englishman, married a Chinese woman and relocated themselves
from England across the Atlantic to New York area because the Eaton family
disapproved of this interracial marriage. Edith Eaton and her siblings grew up in
upstate New York. She relocated to the west coast as a young adult for health reasons.
While in Seattle and San Francisco, she interacted with the Chinese there wrote and
published short stories about the Chinese Americans in these two cities, and gained
recognition among the well-known West Coast frontier writers of her generation such
as Brett Hart, Frank Norris, Mark Twain, Jack London, etc.

Sui Sin Far had published an autobiographical essay in the magazine Independent (1909)
about her biracial family background. In it, she mentioned her early baptism in racial
prejudices against the Chinese people while growing up in upstate New York: she got
herself and her young brother into trouble over a white boy’s racist tease. Sui Sin Far
learned from that incident at her young age that she must stand up to defend herself
and her Chinese racial identity. She would state in that autobiographical essay that her
50% white blood, the socially empowered race in her, will defend her 50% Chinese
blood, the powerless and oppressed half of her biracial identity.

Sui Sin Far published seventeen short stories, plus similar number of children’s stories;
all collected and published in the book entitled Mrs. Spring Fragrance (Chicago: A.C.
McClurg, 1912).

Sui Sin Far died in 1914 from her prolonged illness of tuberculosis.

Sui Sin Far and her short story collection

II

How to Read and Critique Fiction, A Basic Approach

Here, let’s use two stories by Sui Sin Far stories on interracial marriage as example on
short story analysis; both stories were actually one full story included in Sui’s 1912 short
story collection. (Actually her short stories “Wisdom of The New” and
“Americanizing Pao Tsu” as well as “Lin John” are just as interesting for critical
analysis.)

“The Story of One White Woman Who Married a Chinese”
“Her Chinese Husband”

A Intrinsic/internal elements:

1. Narrative style (significance of first person narrative)
2. Plot (story line)
3. Characterization (how characters interact)
4. Conflict & resolution

B Extrinsic/external variables

1. Social climate (Suffrage — equal rights for women — movement)
2. Societal attitude on race relations (institutional racial segregation)

A1: Sui Sin Far employed the narrative technique of first-person to tell the story from
Minnie, a Caucasian woman who once married James Carson, an abusive white
man, and then she married Liu Kanghi, a Chinese man who saved her from
committing suicide and encouraged her to rebuild her life without Carson.

First Person narrative conveys a subjective angle in presenting the story as the
narrator’s own experience, autobiographical and at times judgmental, with personal
observations and opinions.

A2: The story development is linear, sequential, and episodic.

1) Minnie failed her first marriage with James Carson, and was about to commit
suicide;

2) Liu Kanghi convinced her to live on and support her to gain back her sense of
self-worth and started a new life with Liu;

3) Minnie met James Carson on the street and he demanded that she should return
to him; she refused because she now considered Liu a better husband;

4) Liu died from a Chinese community dispute.

A3: Minnie’s story centers around her life experience with two husbands: James Carson,
first husband, is a hypocrite in support woman liberation and an abusive man in
treating and belittling Minnie. Liu Kanghi, Minnie’s second husband, was a Chinese
who were kind and considerate towards Minnie; he was supportive for Minnie to
become self-independent.

A4: The two husbands, one Caucasian and one Chinese, allowed Minnie to compare
and judge, from a wife’s viewpoint, which one was a better husband: Carson’s
macho masculinity v. Liu’s spiritual grandness.

B1: Sui Sin Far’s creative intent: these two stories on an interracial marriage
relationship were written during the height of the suffrage movement, where
American women were fighting for their equal rights and emancipation from male
dominance. Minnie’s marital dependency on James Carson leads to her destruction,
while her self-reliance with Liu Kanghi rebuilds her confidence and happiness in
life.

B2: Sui Sin Far lived in a time period in which racial segregation was a socially
accepted norm. Interracial marriage was not acceptable. This first-person narrative
was Sui Sin Far’s attempt as a story writer to challenge the racist status quo in
America, especially in portraying white man James Carson as an abuser of woman
and Liu Kanghi as a supporter of woman.

Write a critical essay on the following two points:

1. The thematic treatment on interracial marriage
2. Sui Sin Far’s stories focuses on the portrayals of womanhood—the Chinese

women and the Caucasian women. What are her creative intents?

Due: March 10 (Wednesday)