This month’s Kickass Women was found in the pages of Why She Wrote: A Graphic History of the Lives, Inspiration, and Influence Behind the Pens of Classic Women Writers by Lauren Burke and Hannah K. Chapman, illustrated by Kaley Bales. ( A | BN | K ) The book traces the connections between different authors and their common motivations for writing, and depicts some of the turning points in their lives.
I had never heard of the author Edith Maude Eaton, who wrote under the name Sui Sin Far (the Cantonese name of the narcissus flower). I found her story to be fascinating, as well as that of her sister Winnifred, who wrote under the name Otono Watanna.
Edith Maude Eaton was the daughter of an English father and a Chinese mother. Born in 1865, she faced prejudice and wrote, as I mentioned, as Sui Sin Far. She used her journalism and fiction writing to expose the wrongs committed against Chinese Canadians and Chinese Americans. Her sister Winnifred, born in 1875, also used a pen name, Onoto Watanna, and specialized in fiction as well as screenplays and story concepts for Hollywood.
Their parents met when their father was working in Shanghai. The couple moved a great deal, from Shanghai to England, to New York and then to England again before finally settling in Montreal, Canada. They had fourteen children and although the children had little formal schooling because of the need to get jobs at young ages, the couple educated the children at home as much as possible.
Edith had to leave school at the age of eleven to help her father at work and to care for her siblings. At fourteen, she got a job as a stenographer at the Montreal Daily Star newspaper. She quickly established a reputation as someone who could write fiction, essays, humor, and investigative journalism.
Edith had little contact with the Chinese-Canadian community outside of her immediate family until 1890, when The Montreal Witness hired her to investigate the plight of Chinese immigrants. This became Edith’s great passion, and she wrote of the community, particularly the women, with great sympathy for the rest of her life. She later lived in San Francisco where she wrote about Chinese-Americans who were suffering from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Her mixed ethnicity allowed her to move freely within both the Chinese-American community and the primarily White world of journalism and publishing. Her collection of short stories, Mrs. Spring Fragrance, ( A | BN | K ) was the first book published in English in the United States by a woman of Chinese descent.
Winnifred was a prolific novelist and short story writer but is best remembered for her work with Universal Studios and Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer Studios, where she was a screenwriter, title advisor, literary advisor, and script editor. She was the first Asian and the first woman to be the head of a Hollywood script department. Her novel A Japanese Nightingale ( A ) was a bestseller and was made into a silent movie in 1918.
Winnifred used a Japanese-sounding pen name (‘Onoto’ is not actually a Japanese name) to avoid racism against Chinese Americans, which was at a high pitch in America during her lifetime. Many of her stories featured Japanese characters, settings, and influences. Her work and her constructed identity sought to portray Asian characters sympathetically while also benefiting from a trend of Orientalism which involved a push-pull between American fascination with Japanese art versus a simultaneous rejection of Asian people, particularly Chinese people.
Although she built a lucrative career, Winnifred constantly struggled against racism and sexism in Hollywood. Winnifred married a journalist, Bertrand Babcock, with whom she had four children. They divorced in 1917 and she remarried and continued to write.
As a child, Edith suffered from rheumatic fever, which left her with permanent heart problems, She died of heart disease in 1949 at only 49 years old. Winnifred lived to be 78 before also dying from heart disease.
Here’s a short video about Edith:
And here’s one about Winnifred (skip to 3:22 to get past discussion of archives and hear Winnifred’s granddaughter talk about her, and her reputation as the “bad Eaton sister”).
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My primary source for Edith’s life was the above mentioned Why She Wrote, but here’s a couple of additional articles:
Women and the American Story: Life Story: Edith Maude Eaton, aka Sui Sin Far (1865-1914)
Hollywood’s First Asian Screenwriter
I love reading about something completely new to me—as is the story of the Eaton sisters. Thank you for bringing these forgotten women back to the light. I do want to clarify one thing: I think you may have mistyped the year Edith died, which you list as “1949 at only 49 years old.” If she was born in 1865 and died at 49, she probably died in 1914. Sorry—but the old proofreading/copy-editing side of me still pops up on occasion, lol.
Thank you for introducing me to these fascinating women, Carrie.
(FYI: Easton is in your article title.)
Just writing to encourage you to make a few corrections to your wonderful article: Edith was not 14 when she got a job as a stenographer; more like 18! Also not true that Mrs. Spring Fragrance was first book published in English by someone of Chinese descent. Several of her sister Winnifred’s novels were published a decade earlier. Not sure it’s accurate to say Winnifred is “best remembered for her work with Universal Studios and Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer Studios”. Very few people are aware of that aspect of her career! I’m the author of BECOMING SUI SIN FAR which collects much of Edith Eaton’s Chinatown journalism and I’m writing a biography of the Eatons. More info about the family is available here: https://www.winnifredeatonarchive.org/