Sui sin far mrs spring fragrance analysis

arly 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?