EWRT 1BCLASS #5

AGENDA

• Presentation: Terms

• Author Lecture: Sui Sin

Far

• Discussion: “Leaves from

the Mental Portfolio of an

Eurasian”

• Author Lecture: Nella

Larsen

Take ten minutes to discuss Sui Sin Far

and your QHQs on “Leaves from the

Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian.”

Consider how and why Far is different

from Jack.

GROUP DISCUSSION

SUI SIN FAR

EDITH MAUD EATON

1865-1914

What do you

know?

She was born in England, in 1865 to a

Chinese mother and an English (white)

father. According to Eaton scholars, Amy

Ling and Annette White-Parks, "interracial

marriage was taboo in both cultures[; thus,]

theirs was an unusual union." At age seven,

Eaton and her family left England and

immigrated to Hudson City, New York, and in

the early 1870s, settled in a Montreal suburb.

SUI SIN FAR, BORN EDITH MAUDE EATON, WAS

THE FIRST WRITER OF ASIAN DESCENT

PUBLISHED IN NORTH AMERICA

EATON STARTED HER CAREER AT HUGH GRAHAM'S

MONTREAL DAILY STAR NEWSPAPER AS A TYPESETTER AT AGE

EIGHTEEN.

Her first short stories were published in the Dominion

Illustrated in 1888; she also maintained her

administrative duties as well as submitted newspaper

articles. It was in her journalistic writing that Eaton

openly identified herself as a Chinese American and

explained her biracial heritage to her readers. She

wrote under the pseudonym Sui Sin Far, a childhood

nickname that means "water lily" in Chinese. Her sister,

Winnifred Eaton, also a writer, used Onoto Watanna as

her penname.

A SPIRITUAL FOREMOTHER

Eaton has been the subject of two dissertations, a

literary biography, and numerous articles. Notable Sui Sin

Far scholars include S. E. Solberg, Amy Ling, James

Doyle, and Annette White-Parks.

Amy Ling writes, "If we set Sui Sin Far into the context of

her time and place, in late nineteenth-century

sinophobic and imperialistic Euro-American nations,

then we admit that for her, a Eurasian woman who

could pass as white, to choose to champion the

Chinese and working-class women and to identify

herself as such, publicly and in print, an act of great

determination and courage."

THE RECEPTION OF CHINESE BY WHITE AMERICANS

To appreciate the work of Edith Eaton fully, we must discuss its historical

and social context during her period. Though the Chinese were never

enslaved in this country, as were Africans, they were brought here in large numbers as indentured laborers. The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)

was only repealed in 1943 and naturalized citizenship for Asians was

permitted in 1954, long after African-Americans and American Indians

were recognized as American citizens. Initially attracted to California

by the discovery of gold in the mid-nineteenth century, by the l860s

thousands of Chinese laborers were enticed here to construct the

mountainous western section of the transcontinental railroad. Almost

from the beginning, prejudice against them was strong. They were

regarded as an alien race with peculiar customs and habits that

made them inassimilable in a nation that wanted to remain white; their hard-working, frugal ways and their willingness to work for lower wages

than whites rendered them an economic threat and thus targets of

racial violence.

SPRING FRAGRANCE AND OTHER WRITINGSB Y S U I S I N F A R

T H I S T E X T I N C L U D E S “ L E A V E S F R O M T H E M E N T A L P O R T F O L I O O F A N E U R A S I A N ”

Summary?

QHQ: “LEAVES FROM THE MENTAL PORTFOLIO OF AN EURASIAN”

1. Q: Why does Sui Sin Far’s family think she is the weakest/ most emotional

out of her brother and sisters?

1. Q: While playing in the garden with another child, a girl passes by and

warns the other child not to play with the author because of her Chinese

mother. The other child insists that she doesn’t care, at which point the

author responds to the other child: “But I don’t like you.”

Why did the author close herself off from the other child, whose only

intention was to befriend her?

1. Q: In the short story as [Far] grew older she became less ashamed of her

origin and her mixed race. Why is that so?

QHQ: “LEAVES FROM THE MENTAL PORTFOLIO OF AN EURASIAN”

1. Q: How did Sui get through the constant bullying and racism when she was younger and as journalist? How did she remain professional when she heard people bash her own race?

2. Q: Why does Sui Sun Far identify more with her Chinese culture than her white culture?

3. Q: [Is] more important for Sui to embrace one side of her nationality or her individualism?

4. Q: Why does Sui feel a deep need to fight for the half of her that is Chinese?

5. Q: Why does Sui Sin Far want to move to China even though she says individuality is more important than nationality?

QHQ: “LEAVES FROM THE MENTAL PORTFOLIO OF AN EURASIAN”

1.Q: Besides her race, Far is also a woman; in

that era, women did not get much chance to

succeed, but Far chose to be a journalist. How

did her race and gender affect her career?

2.Q: Why doesn’t Sui Sin far identify as white or

at least pass as white to make her life easier?

3.Q: How often do people of mixed race

identify only as one, or more strongly with one

race than another?

PASSING AND SUI SIN FAR

“Ah, indeed!” he exclaims. “Who would have thought it at first glance? Yet now I see the difference between her and other children. What a peculiar coloring! Her mother’s eyes and hair and her father’s features, I presume. Very interesting little creature!”

I had been called from play for the purpose of inspection. I do not return to it. For the rest of the evening I hide myself behind a hall door and refuse to show myself until it is time to go home.

Why does Far hide after this experience?

How does this moment contribute to her identity

development?

“Look!” says Charlie. “Those men in there are Chinese!” Eagerly I gaze

into the long low room. With the exception of my mother, who is English

bred with English ways and manner of dress, I have never seen a

Chinese person. The two men within the store are uncouth specimens of

their race, drest in working blouses and pantaloons with queues hanging

down their backs. I recoil with a sense of shock.

“Oh, Charlie,” I cry. “Are we like that?”

“Well, we’re Chinese, and they’re Chinese, too, so we must be!” returns

my seven year old brother.

“Of course you are,” puts in a boy who has followed us down the street,

and who lives near us and has seen my mother: “Chinky, Chinky,

Chinaman, yellow-face, pig-tail, rat-eater.” A number of other boys and

several little girls join in with him.“Better than you,” shouts my brother, facing the crowd. He is younger

and smaller than any there, and I am even more insignificant than he;

but my spirit revives.

“I’d rather be Chinese than anything else in the world,” I scream.

Why does Far fight after this experience?

How does this moment contribute to her identity development?

The greatest temptation was in the thought of getting far away from

where I was known, to where no mocking cries of “Chinese!”

“Chinese!” could reach.

Here Sui seems to want to disappear. Given her desire to

escape prejudice, why does she become a champion of the

Chinese instead of “passing” as we know so many others do

during this time? In other words, which of her life experiences

compel her to refuse to pass as white? How does she become

the woman who speaks the lines below?

With a great effort I raise my eyes from my plate. “Mr. K.,” I say,

addressing my employer, “the Chinese people may have no

souls, no expression on their faces, be altogether beyond the

pale of civilization, but whatever they are, I want you to

understand that I am—I am a Chinese.”

HOW AND WHY DOES FAR RESIST PASSING?

1. Far refuses to pass as white. Why? What

convinces her to consciously and

intentionally reveal her racial identity?

2. Consider how Far resists passing. Which

behaviors can you specifically identify?

3. Why and how does Far do what Jack

could not do?

AUTHOR: NELLA LARSEN

Nella Larsen is best known as the author of two of the most famous novels of the Harlem Renaissance, Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929). Both novels deal with the complicated lives of light-skinned African American women who are faced with both discrimination and the temptation to forsake their heritage and “pass” for white.

Her father died when she was two, and her mother

then married a man of, in Larsen’s words, “her own

race and nationality.” While it is known that Larsen did

go to a small, private elementary school with her white

half sister, evidently her parents found her existence

increasingly embarrassing in their society of Germans

and Scandinavians. Although Larsen had been raised

in an all-white world, as an adult she felt herself shut off

from it, as well as from her own family. As she told an

interviewer many years later, she had little contact with

her mother and her half sister, because her presence

would be “awkward” for them.

LARSEN WAS BORN IN CHICAGO TO A DANISH MOTHER AND A BLACK WEST INDIAN FATHER.

IF LARSEN WAS TO BE A WRITER, SHE COULD NOT HAVE BEEN AT A BETTER PLACE AT A BETTER TIME.

Not only was Harlem the center of black society, but black writers and intellectuals were also using it as the base for a new cultural movement, to be known as the Harlem Renaissance. This creative community did more than enable the members of a black intellectual elite, including such writers as Larsen, Jessie Fauset, and Walter White, to meet and exchange ideas; through their contacts in the white publishing establishment, older writers, such as Larsen’s close friend Carl Van Vechten, a white critic and novelist, could help younger ones get their works published.

IT IS UNCERTAIN WHY LARSEN’S CAREER AS A WRITER ENDED SO ABRUPTLY.

A very private person, Larsen was shaken by accusations of plagiarism, when her short story “Sanctuary” (1930) was said to be similar to an earlier story by Sheila Kaye-Smith. Because they had seen Larsen’s rough drafts, however, her editors had no difficulty establishing her innocence. At about that time, Larsen also discovered that her husband, chairman of the physics department at Fisk, was in love with another woman. Nevertheless, it is known that Larsen worked on three different novels and that she had one of them almost completed. Larsen was still working on novels as late as 1932 and 1933, while she was living in Nashville in an attempt to revive her marriage. It may have been the notoriety that attended her divorce from Imes in 1933 that drove Larsen into anonymity.

In any case, there were no more novels. Larsen left Harlem and moved to Greenwich Village. In 1941, after her former husband died and her alimony ceased, Larsen went back to her original career of nursing. She died in Manhattan on March 30, 1964, at the age of seventy-two.

Finish Larsen’s

Passing

Post #6: QHQ on

Larsen’s Passing.

Make sure to include

cited textual support

in your question or

answer.

Study: Terms Exam

#1 at our next

meeting