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1 b class 5

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1. The agenda covers a presentation on literary terms, author lectures on Sui Sin Far and Nella Larsen, and a discussion of Sui Sin Far's short story "Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian." 2. The lecture on Sui Sin Far discusses her biracial background, early career writing under the pseudonym Sui Sin Far, and focus on representing Chinese American women and challenging stereotypes in her works. 3. The brief biography of Nella Larsen outlines her biracial background, involvement in the Harlem Renaissance, two novels dealing with light-skinned African American women passing for white, and the abrupt end to her writing career.

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EWRT 1B CLASS #5
AGENDA • Presentation: Terms • Author Lecture: Sui Sin Far • Discussion: “Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian” • Author Lecture: Nella Larsen
SUI SIN FAR EDITH MAUD EATON 1865-1914 What do you know?
She was born in England, in 1865 to a Chinese mother and an English (white) father. According to Eaton scholars, Amy Ling and Annette White-Parks, "interracial marriage was taboo in both cultures[; thus,] theirs was an unusual union." At age seven, Eaton and her family left England and immigrated to Hudson City, New York, and in the early 1870s, settled in a Montreal suburb. SUI SIN FAR, BORN EDITH MAUDE EATON, WAS THE FIRST WRITER OF ASIAN DESCENT PUBLISHED IN NORTH AMERICA
EATON STARTED HER CAREER AT HUGH GRAHAM'S MONTREAL DAILY STAR NEWSPAPER AS A TYPESETTER AT AGE EIGHTEEN. Her first short stories were published in the Dominion Illustrated in 1888; she also maintained her administrative duties as well as submitted newspaper articles. It was in her journalistic writing that Eaton openly identified herself as a Chinese American and explained her biracial heritage to her readers. She wrote under the pseudonym Sui Sin Far, a childhood nickname that means "water lily" in Chinese. Her sister, Winnifred Eaton, also a writer, used Onoto Watanna as her penname.
YI BU WANG HUA Far gained a literary reputation. Chinese American women were at the center of much of Eaton's writing, and she worked to break down cultural stereotypes. In 1913, Eaton, stricken by horrible rheumatism and bad health, returned to Montreal. She died on April 7, 1914 and is buried in the Protestant Cemetery there. In gratitude for her work on their behalf, the Chinese community erected a special headstone on her tomb inscribed with the characters "Yi bu wang hua" ("The righteous one does not forget China").
A SPIRITUAL FOREMOTHER Eaton has been the subject of two dissertations, a literary biography, and numerous articles. Notable Sui Sin Far scholars include S. E. Solberg, Amy Ling, James Doyle, and Annette White-Parks. Amy Ling writes, "If we set Sui Sin Far into the context of her time and place, in late nineteenth-century sinophobic and imperialistic Euro-American nations, then we admit that for her, a Eurasian woman who could pass as white, to choose to champion the Chinese and working-class women and to identify herself as such, publicly and in print, an act of great determination and courage."
THE RECEPTION OF CHINESE BY WHITE AMERICANS To appreciate the work of Edith Eaton fully, we must discuss its historical and social context during her period. Though the Chinese were never enslaved in this country, as were Africans, they were brought here in large numbers as indentured laborers. The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) was only repealed in 1943 and naturalized citizenship for Asians was permitted in 1954, long after African-Americans and American Indians were recognized as American citizens. Initially attracted to California by the discovery of gold in the mid-nineteenth century, by the l860s thousands of Chinese laborers were enticed here to construct the mountainous western section of the transcontinental railroad. Almost from the beginning, prejudice against them was strong. They were regarded as an alien race with peculiar customs and habits that made them inassimilable in a nation that wanted to remain white; their hard-working, frugal ways and their willingness to work for lower wages than whites rendered them an economic threat and thus targets of racial violence.
SPRING FRAGRANCE AND OTHER WRITINGS B Y S U I S I N F A R T H I S T E X T I N C L U D E S “ L E A V E S F R O M T H E M E N T A L P O R T F O L I O O F A N E U R A S I A N ” Summary?
QHQ: “LEAVES FROM THE MENTAL PORTFOLIO OF AN EURASIAN”
QHQ: “LEAVES FROM THE MENTAL PORTFOLIO OF AN EURASIAN”
QHQ: “LEAVES FROM THE MENTAL PORTFOLIO OF AN EURASIAN”
PASSING AND SUI SIN FAR “Ah, indeed!” he exclaims. “Who would have thought it at first glance? Yet now I see the difference between her and other children. What a peculiar coloring! Her mother’s eyes and hair and her father’s features, I presume. Very interesting little creature!” I had been called from play for the purpose of inspection. I do not return to it. For the rest of the evening I hide myself behind a hall door and refuse to show myself until it is time to go home. Why does Far hide after this experience? How does this moment contribute to her identity development?
“Look!” says Charlie. “Those men in there are Chinese!” Eagerly I gaze into the long low room. With the exception of my mother, who is English bred with English ways and manner of dress, I have never seen a Chinese person. The two men within the store are uncouth specimens of their race, drest in working blouses and pantaloons with queues hanging down their backs. I recoil with a sense of shock. “Oh, Charlie,” I cry. “Are we like that?” “Well, we’re Chinese, and they’re Chinese, too, so we must be!” returns my seven year old brother. “Of course you are,” puts in a boy who has followed us down the street, and who lives near us and has seen my mother: “Chinky, Chinky, Chinaman, yellow-face, pig-tail, rat-eater.” A number of other boys and several little girls join in with him. “Better than you,” shouts my brother, facing the crowd. He is younger and smaller than any there, and I am even more insignificant than he; but my spirit revives. “I’d rather be Chinese than anything else in the world,” I scream. Why does Far fight after this experience? How does this moment contribute to her identity development?
The greatest temptation was in the thought of getting far away from where I was known, to where no mocking cries of “Chinese!” “Chinese!” could reach. Here Sui seems to want to disappear. Given her desire to escape prejudice, why does she become a champion of the Chinese instead of “passing” as we know so many others do during this time? In other words, which of her life experiences compel her to refuse to pass as white? How does she become the woman who speaks the lines below? With a great effort I raise my eyes from my plate. “Mr. K.,” I say, addressing my employer, “the Chinese people may have no souls, no expression on their faces, be altogether beyond the pale of civilization, but whatever they are, I want you to understand that I am—I am a Chinese.”
HOW AND WHY DOES FAR RESIST PASSING? 1. Far refuses to pass as white. Why? What convinces her to consciously and intentionally reveal her racial identity? 2. Consider how Far resists passing. Which behaviors can you specifically identify? 3. Why and how does Far do what Jack could not do?
AUTHOR: NELLA LARSEN Nella Larsen is best known as the author of two of the most famous novels of the Harlem Renaissance, Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929). Both novels deal with the complicated lives of light-skinned African American women who are faced with both discrimination and the temptation to forsake their heritage and “pass” for white.
Her father died when she was two, and her mother then married a man of, in Larsen’s words, “her own race and nationality.” While it is known that Larsen did go to a small, private elementary school with her white half sister, evidently her parents found her existence increasingly embarrassing in their society of Germans and Scandinavians. Although Larsen had been raised in an all-white world, as an adult she felt herself shut off from it, as well as from her own family. As she told an interviewer many years later, she had little contact with her mother and her half sister, because her presence would be “awkward” for them. LARSEN WAS BORN IN CHICAGO TO A DANISH MOTHER AND A BLACK WEST INDIAN FATHER.
IF LARSEN WAS TO BE A WRITER, SHE COULD NOT HAVE BEEN AT A BETTER PLACE AT A BETTER TIME. Not only was Harlem the center of black society, but black writers and intellectuals were also using it as the base for a new cultural movement, to be known as the Harlem Renaissance. This creative community did more than enable the members of a black intellectual elite, including such writers as Larsen, Jessie Fauset, and Walter White, to meet and exchange ideas; through their contacts in the white publishing establishment, older writers, such as Larsen’s close friend Carl Van Vechten, a white critic and novelist, could help younger ones get their works published.
IT IS UNCERTAIN WHY LARSEN’S CAREER AS A WRITER ENDED SO ABRUPTLY. A very private person, Larsen was shaken by accusations of plagiarism, when her short story “Sanctuary” (1930) was said to be similar to an earlier story by Sheila Kaye-Smith. Because they had seen Larsen’s rough drafts, however, her editors had no difficulty establishing her innocence. At about that time, Larsen also discovered that her husband, chairman of the physics department at Fisk, was in love with another woman. Nevertheless, it is known that Larsen worked on three different novels and that she had one of them almost completed. Larsen was still working on novels as late as 1932 and 1933, while she was living in Nashville in an attempt to revive her marriage. It may have been the notoriety that attended her divorce from Imes in 1933 that drove Larsen into anonymity. In any case, there were no more novels. Larsen left Harlem and moved to Greenwich Village. In 1941, after her former husband died and her alimony ceased, Larsen went back to her original career of nursing. She died in Manhattan on March 30, 1964, at the age of seventy-two.
 Finish Larsen’s Passing  Post #6: QHQ on Larsen’s Passing. Make sure to include cited textual support in your question or answer.  Study: Terms Exam #1 at our next meeting

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1 b class 5

  • 2. AGENDA • Presentation: Terms • Author Lecture: Sui Sin Far • Discussion: “Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian” • Author Lecture: Nella Larsen
  • 3. SUI SIN FAR EDITH MAUD EATON 1865-1914 What do you know?
  • 4. She was born in England, in 1865 to a Chinese mother and an English (white) father. According to Eaton scholars, Amy Ling and Annette White-Parks, "interracial marriage was taboo in both cultures[; thus,] theirs was an unusual union." At age seven, Eaton and her family left England and immigrated to Hudson City, New York, and in the early 1870s, settled in a Montreal suburb. SUI SIN FAR, BORN EDITH MAUDE EATON, WAS THE FIRST WRITER OF ASIAN DESCENT PUBLISHED IN NORTH AMERICA
  • 5. EATON STARTED HER CAREER AT HUGH GRAHAM'S MONTREAL DAILY STAR NEWSPAPER AS A TYPESETTER AT AGE EIGHTEEN. Her first short stories were published in the Dominion Illustrated in 1888; she also maintained her administrative duties as well as submitted newspaper articles. It was in her journalistic writing that Eaton openly identified herself as a Chinese American and explained her biracial heritage to her readers. She wrote under the pseudonym Sui Sin Far, a childhood nickname that means "water lily" in Chinese. Her sister, Winnifred Eaton, also a writer, used Onoto Watanna as her penname.
  • 6. YI BU WANG HUA Far gained a literary reputation. Chinese American women were at the center of much of Eaton's writing, and she worked to break down cultural stereotypes. In 1913, Eaton, stricken by horrible rheumatism and bad health, returned to Montreal. She died on April 7, 1914 and is buried in the Protestant Cemetery there. In gratitude for her work on their behalf, the Chinese community erected a special headstone on her tomb inscribed with the characters "Yi bu wang hua" ("The righteous one does not forget China").
  • 7. A SPIRITUAL FOREMOTHER Eaton has been the subject of two dissertations, a literary biography, and numerous articles. Notable Sui Sin Far scholars include S. E. Solberg, Amy Ling, James Doyle, and Annette White-Parks. Amy Ling writes, "If we set Sui Sin Far into the context of her time and place, in late nineteenth-century sinophobic and imperialistic Euro-American nations, then we admit that for her, a Eurasian woman who could pass as white, to choose to champion the Chinese and working-class women and to identify herself as such, publicly and in print, an act of great determination and courage."
  • 8. THE RECEPTION OF CHINESE BY WHITE AMERICANS To appreciate the work of Edith Eaton fully, we must discuss its historical and social context during her period. Though the Chinese were never enslaved in this country, as were Africans, they were brought here in large numbers as indentured laborers. The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) was only repealed in 1943 and naturalized citizenship for Asians was permitted in 1954, long after African-Americans and American Indians were recognized as American citizens. Initially attracted to California by the discovery of gold in the mid-nineteenth century, by the l860s thousands of Chinese laborers were enticed here to construct the mountainous western section of the transcontinental railroad. Almost from the beginning, prejudice against them was strong. They were regarded as an alien race with peculiar customs and habits that made them inassimilable in a nation that wanted to remain white; their hard-working, frugal ways and their willingness to work for lower wages than whites rendered them an economic threat and thus targets of racial violence.
  • 9. SPRING FRAGRANCE AND OTHER WRITINGS B Y S U I S I N F A R T H I S T E X T I N C L U D E S “ L E A V E S F R O M T H E M E N T A L P O R T F O L I O O F A N E U R A S I A N ” Summary?
  • 10. QHQ: “LEAVES FROM THE MENTAL PORTFOLIO OF AN EURASIAN”
  • 11. QHQ: “LEAVES FROM THE MENTAL PORTFOLIO OF AN EURASIAN”
  • 12. QHQ: “LEAVES FROM THE MENTAL PORTFOLIO OF AN EURASIAN”
  • 13. PASSING AND SUI SIN FAR “Ah, indeed!” he exclaims. “Who would have thought it at first glance? Yet now I see the difference between her and other children. What a peculiar coloring! Her mother’s eyes and hair and her father’s features, I presume. Very interesting little creature!” I had been called from play for the purpose of inspection. I do not return to it. For the rest of the evening I hide myself behind a hall door and refuse to show myself until it is time to go home. Why does Far hide after this experience? How does this moment contribute to her identity development?
  • 14. “Look!” says Charlie. “Those men in there are Chinese!” Eagerly I gaze into the long low room. With the exception of my mother, who is English bred with English ways and manner of dress, I have never seen a Chinese person. The two men within the store are uncouth specimens of their race, drest in working blouses and pantaloons with queues hanging down their backs. I recoil with a sense of shock. “Oh, Charlie,” I cry. “Are we like that?” “Well, we’re Chinese, and they’re Chinese, too, so we must be!” returns my seven year old brother. “Of course you are,” puts in a boy who has followed us down the street, and who lives near us and has seen my mother: “Chinky, Chinky, Chinaman, yellow-face, pig-tail, rat-eater.” A number of other boys and several little girls join in with him. “Better than you,” shouts my brother, facing the crowd. He is younger and smaller than any there, and I am even more insignificant than he; but my spirit revives. “I’d rather be Chinese than anything else in the world,” I scream. Why does Far fight after this experience? How does this moment contribute to her identity development?
  • 15. The greatest temptation was in the thought of getting far away from where I was known, to where no mocking cries of “Chinese!” “Chinese!” could reach. Here Sui seems to want to disappear. Given her desire to escape prejudice, why does she become a champion of the Chinese instead of “passing” as we know so many others do during this time? In other words, which of her life experiences compel her to refuse to pass as white? How does she become the woman who speaks the lines below? With a great effort I raise my eyes from my plate. “Mr. K.,” I say, addressing my employer, “the Chinese people may have no souls, no expression on their faces, be altogether beyond the pale of civilization, but whatever they are, I want you to understand that I am—I am a Chinese.”
  • 16. HOW AND WHY DOES FAR RESIST PASSING? 1. Far refuses to pass as white. Why? What convinces her to consciously and intentionally reveal her racial identity? 2. Consider how Far resists passing. Which behaviors can you specifically identify? 3. Why and how does Far do what Jack could not do?
  • 17. AUTHOR: NELLA LARSEN Nella Larsen is best known as the author of two of the most famous novels of the Harlem Renaissance, Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929). Both novels deal with the complicated lives of light-skinned African American women who are faced with both discrimination and the temptation to forsake their heritage and “pass” for white.
  • 18. Her father died when she was two, and her mother then married a man of, in Larsen’s words, “her own race and nationality.” While it is known that Larsen did go to a small, private elementary school with her white half sister, evidently her parents found her existence increasingly embarrassing in their society of Germans and Scandinavians. Although Larsen had been raised in an all-white world, as an adult she felt herself shut off from it, as well as from her own family. As she told an interviewer many years later, she had little contact with her mother and her half sister, because her presence would be “awkward” for them. LARSEN WAS BORN IN CHICAGO TO A DANISH MOTHER AND A BLACK WEST INDIAN FATHER.
  • 19. IF LARSEN WAS TO BE A WRITER, SHE COULD NOT HAVE BEEN AT A BETTER PLACE AT A BETTER TIME. Not only was Harlem the center of black society, but black writers and intellectuals were also using it as the base for a new cultural movement, to be known as the Harlem Renaissance. This creative community did more than enable the members of a black intellectual elite, including such writers as Larsen, Jessie Fauset, and Walter White, to meet and exchange ideas; through their contacts in the white publishing establishment, older writers, such as Larsen’s close friend Carl Van Vechten, a white critic and novelist, could help younger ones get their works published.
  • 20. IT IS UNCERTAIN WHY LARSEN’S CAREER AS A WRITER ENDED SO ABRUPTLY. A very private person, Larsen was shaken by accusations of plagiarism, when her short story “Sanctuary” (1930) was said to be similar to an earlier story by Sheila Kaye-Smith. Because they had seen Larsen’s rough drafts, however, her editors had no difficulty establishing her innocence. At about that time, Larsen also discovered that her husband, chairman of the physics department at Fisk, was in love with another woman. Nevertheless, it is known that Larsen worked on three different novels and that she had one of them almost completed. Larsen was still working on novels as late as 1932 and 1933, while she was living in Nashville in an attempt to revive her marriage. It may have been the notoriety that attended her divorce from Imes in 1933 that drove Larsen into anonymity. In any case, there were no more novels. Larsen left Harlem and moved to Greenwich Village. In 1941, after her former husband died and her alimony ceased, Larsen went back to her original career of nursing. She died in Manhattan on March 30, 1964, at the age of seventy-two.
  • 21.  Finish Larsen’s Passing  Post #6: QHQ on Larsen’s Passing. Make sure to include cited textual support in your question or answer.  Study: Terms Exam #1 at our next meeting