Reconstructing, Reimagining: 1865–1900 305anticipating the day when socialism will prevail in the city, look to the triumphs
of the future rather than the tragedies of the past.
Other immigrant groups might be exploited in the way Jurgis Rudkus was;
Chinese immigrants fared even worse. They were exploited, abhorred, and attacked;
then, under the terms of an act of government in 1882, almost all further Chinese
immigration was banned. It was in this climate that two of the earliest Asian-
American writers began their work. Edith and Winnifred Eaton were the daughters
of a Chinese mother and an English father. It was a measure of the complex racism
of the times that, when she began to write, Winnifred Eaton (1875–1954) assumed a
Japanese pseudonym. As her sister, Edith, was to observe, Americans had “a much
higher regard for the Japanese than for the Chinese.” So, she explained, “several half
Chinese young men and women, thinking to advance themselves, both in a social
and business sense, pass as Japanese.” Edith was not referring to Winnifred when she
said this: the observation occurs in her autobiographical essay, “Leaves from the
Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian” (1909). But, under the name of Onoto Watanna,
Winnifred certainly found success. She wrote hundreds of stories and seventeen
bestselling novels, most of them set in Japan. In some of the stories, such as “Two
Converts” (1901) and “The Loves of Sakura Jiro and the Three Headed Maid” (1903),
she explores the situation of the emigrant with verve and sly wit, emphasizing in
particular the confusions involved in belonging to two cultures. But neither the tales
nor the novels ever really challenge racial stereotypes, or for that matter sexual
stereotypes. The Japanese men are invariably noble and heroic, the Japanese women
shy, delicate, and charming. There is interracial romance, but it is continually set
within the terms of accepted romantic convention. That is, romance occurs between
English or American men and Japanese women, never the reverse. Her fiction made
Winnifred Eaton popular at the time, and reasonably wealthy. They also provided a
ticket to Hollywood: from 1924 to 1931, she was chief scenarist at Universal Studios.
Edith Maud Eaton (1865–1914), on the other hand, adopted a Chinese pseudonym,
Sui Sin Far, and wrote specifically about Chinese people and the Chinese experience
in America. Born in England, she spent her early childhood in Canada. She traveled
back and forth across the United States between 1898 and 1912, supporting herself
with her journalism. And her stories and articles soon began appearing in popular
and important national magazines like Overland, Century, and Good Housekeeping.
“Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian” describes the position from which
she wrote. A tireless campaigner for social and racial justice, Eaton describes in this
piece how she gradually came, not only to accept, but proudly to embrace the Chinese
part of her identity. She also explains how she encountered racial prejudice on both
sides of her inheritance – although, given white power and dominance, white
prejudice against the Chinese has, she insists, far more pervasive and destructive
consequences. “Fundamentally, I muse, all people are the same,” she observes. “My
mother’s race is as prejudiced as my father’s. Only when the whole world becomes as
one family will human beings be able to see clearly and hear distinctly.” “Some day,”
she adds, “a great part of the world will be Eurasian.” That was the positive side of
her predicament. In her better moods, Eaton could see her dual inheritance, and herGGray_c03.indd 305ray_c 03 .indd 305 8 8/1/2011 7:54:26 AM/ 1 / 2011 7 : 54 : 26 AM