{"id":29919,"date":"2013-03-30T16:30:54","date_gmt":"2013-03-30T16:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=29919"},"modified":"2013-03-30T16:30:54","modified_gmt":"2013-03-30T16:30:54","slug":"cross-cultural-affinities-between-native-american-and-white-women-in-%e2%80%9cthe-alaska-widow%e2%80%9d-by-edith-eaton-sui-sin-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=29919","title":{"rendered":"Cross-Cultural Affinities between Native American and White Women in \u201cThe Alaska Widow\u201d by Edith Eaton (Sui Sin Far)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cross-Cultural Affinities between Native American and White Women in \u201cThe Alaska Widow\u201d by Edith Eaton (Sui Sin Far)<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States<\/a>
\nVolume 38, Number 1<\/a> (Spring 2013)
\npages 155-163
\nDOI: 10.1093\/melus\/mls002<\/a><\/p>\n

Mary Chapman<\/a><\/strong>, Associate Professor of English
\nUniversity of British Columbia<\/em><\/p>\n

When her work was recovered in the 1980s, Edith Eaton<\/a> (Sui Sin Far) was credited with founding the canon of Asian-North American literature. The earliest Eaton scholarship focused on her resistance to yellow-peril<\/a> discourse through her sympathetic portrayals of diasporic Chinese and Eurasians. This scholarship contrasted Edith Eaton\u2019s \u201cauthentic\u201d self-presentation as the half-Chinese \u201cSui Sin Far\u201d with her sister Winnifred\u2019s<\/a> posturing as Japanese noblewoman author \u201cOnoto Watanna.\u201d Although fascinating in many ways, this scholarship was circumscribed by both an exclusive focus on the politics of race as it intersected with gender\u2014and the lack of access to Eaton\u2019s complete and more internally self-contradictory oeuvre. Scholars relying on the same handful of anthologized works\u2014\u201cThe Story of One White Woman Who Married a Chinese\u201d (1910), \u201cHer Chinese Husband\u201d (1910), \u201cIn the Land of the Free\u201d (1909), \u201cThe Wisdom of the New\u201d (1912), \u201cMrs. Spring Fragrance\u201d (1910), and \u201cThe Inferior Woman\u201d (1910)\u2014explored only a few of Eaton\u2019s themes, most notably Eurasian marriage, tricksterism<\/a>, and American anti-Asian racism. By focusing on Eaton\u2019s depictions of North American Chinatowns, scholars have rarely recognized the broader transnational political contexts in which Eaton wrote or the cross-racial collaborations depicted in many of her works. Most have understated the significance of Eaton\u2019s British, Canadian, Jamaican, and Chinese cultural referents and ignored significant interactions with the native communities\u2014French Canadian, Caribbean, and even Native North American\u2014that she depicts in much of her work. Nor have scholars adequately appreciated the carefully framed politics of what Sean McCann dismisses as Eaton\u2019s \u201cordinary, mundane and domestic\u201d settings (76).<\/p>\n

In the past ten years, scholars have located numerous unknown essays, works of fiction, and journalism by Eaton that expand her known oeuvre and challenge the Asian American dualism for which she is known. In 2002, Dominika Ferens<\/a> uncovered a daily column Eaton wrote…<\/p>\n

Read or purchase the article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cross-Cultural Affinities between Native American and White Women in \u201cThe Alaska Widow\u201d by Edith Eaton (Sui Sin Far) MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States Volume 38, Number 1 (Spring 2013) pages 155-163 DOI: 10.1093\/melus\/mls002 Mary Chapman, Associate Professor of English University of British Columbia When her work was recovered in the 1980s, Edith Eaton […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,1196,8,20,25],"tags":[3068,12899,4259,14211,3319],"class_list":["post-29919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-usa","category-women","tag-edith-eaton","tag-mary-chapman","tag-melus","tag-melus-multi-ethnic-literature-of-the-united-states","tag-sui-sin-far"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29919\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}