Sui Sin Far and Onoto Watanna : Two Early Chinese-Canadian Authors

Type of resource
Author/collaborator
Title
Sui Sin Far and Onoto Watanna : Two Early Chinese-Canadian Authors
Abstract
The author points out that the British-born Edith Eaton (1865-1914) and her sister, the Montreal-born Winnifred Eaton (1875-1954), the daughters of a Chinese mother and a British father, were among the earliest creative writers in North America to deal with Asian people and topics. Edith Eaton wrote under the pseudonym Sui Sin Far (a transliterations of the symbol for water lily), and Winnifred Eaton wrote under the Japanese-sounding but apparently meaningless pseudonym Onoto Watanna. The author outlines the sisters' literary careers, both in Canada and the United States. Although Onoto Watanna was more popularly known of the two Eaton sisters during their lives, more scholarly works about Sui Sin Far has been written since she was re-discovered in the 1980s. Sui Sin Far spent sixteen years living and writing in the United States before she returned to Montreal, where she died and is buried, while her sister left for the United States in her late teens and died in Butte, Montana.
Publication
Canadian Literature : A Quarterly of Criticism and Review
Volume
No. 140
Pages
50-58
Date
Spring 1994
Language
en
URL
Citation
Doyle, James. “Sui Sin Far and Onoto Watanna : Two Early Chinese-Canadian Authors.” Canadian Literature : A Quarterly of Criticism and Review No. 140 (Spring 1994): 50–58. https://canlit.ca/full-issue/?issue=140.
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