{"id":35532,"date":"2014-01-19T04:33:02","date_gmt":"2014-01-19T04:33:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=35532"},"modified":"2014-01-21T22:03:08","modified_gmt":"2014-01-21T22:03:08","slug":"detecting-winnifred-eaton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=35532","title":{"rendered":"Detecting Winnifred Eaton"},"content":{"rendered":"

Detecting Winnifred Eaton<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States<\/a>
\nPublished online: 2014-01-16
\nDOI: 10.1093\/melus\/mlt078<\/a><\/p>\n

Jinny Huh<\/a><\/strong>, Assistant Professor of English
\nUniversity of Vermont<\/em><\/p>\n

In her recent introduction to Winnifred Eaton\u2019s<\/a> Marion: The Story of an Artist\u2019s Model<\/a><\/em> (1916), Karen E. H. Skinazi<\/a> explores the relationship between racial ambiguity\u2014that of both the anonymous author and the heroines in Marion<\/em> and its predecessor, Me: A Book of Remembrance<\/a><\/em> (1915)\u2014and the audience\u2019s ability to detect racial coding. \u201cMe<\/em>\u2019s success,\u201d Skinazi states, \u201chas been predicated on a mystery that allowed each reader the chance to become a literary Sherlock Holmes<\/a>, cracking the codes of its vault of shocking secrets\u201d (xvii). Later, Skinazi writes that a New York Times<\/em> reviewer, playing detective, solves Eaton\u2019s racial passing<\/a> utilizing the science of detection \u00e0 la Edgar Allan Poe<\/a> (xxi-xxii). Skinazi\u2019s allusions to the art of detection, although brief, are astute, leading to this essay\u2019s rereading of Eaton\u2019s legacy through the lens of detection and the anxieties produced by its failures, especially the threat of racial passing. It is no coincidence that Eaton published her fiction at a time when both classic detective fiction and African American passing tales were at the peak of their popularity.<\/p>\n

Few critics have examined Eaton\u2019s role in the detective genre. This essay responds to this oversight by arguing that Eaton\u2019s reliance on a trope of racial and ethnic passing, both in her choice of pseudonym and in her Japanese romances, cannot be fully appreciated without situating her within the context of the panic about detecting passing that swept America during the first quarter of the twentieth century. The unique lens of detective fiction allows us further to conceptualize Eaton\u2019s role as a founding figure of Asian American fiction. This essay also highlights Eaton\u2019s familiarity with rules of genre, particularly detective fiction and African American passing narratives, and her participation in the construction of racial epistemologies that were then being codified by…<\/p>\n

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

Detecting Winnifred Eaton MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States Published online: 2014-01-16 DOI: 10.1093\/melus\/mlt078 Jinny Huh, Assistant Professor of English University of Vermont In her recent introduction to Winnifred Eaton\u2019s Marion: The Story of an Artist\u2019s Model (1916), Karen E. H. Skinazi explores the relationship between racial ambiguity\u2014that of both the anonymous author and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,5,1196,8],"tags":[11327,5933,4259,14211,839],"class_list":["post-35532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-book-reviews","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","tag-jinny-huh","tag-karen-e-h-skinazi","tag-melus","tag-melus-multi-ethnic-literature-of-the-united-states","tag-winnifred-eaton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35532","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=35532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35532\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}