Mrs. Spring Fragrance: and Other Writings

Description

A rediscovered classic of linked short stories set in San Francisco's Chinatown, portraying Chinese Americans as they fall in love, encounter racism, and wrestle with their new, hyphenated identities--a century before writers like Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan. Set in early twentieth-century Chinatown, Mrs. Spring Fragrance and Other Writings is the story of Chinese men and women living in the United States as they wrestle with prejudice and forced detention; choose to become wholly Americanized or stay true to their cultural heritage; meet both kind and predatory Americans; and find love, purpose, and understanding within their families. By turns ironic and heart-rending, these stories are windows into the lives of everyday people in an unforgiving, often racist city who find solidarity and hope in the most unexpected places.

Edith Maude Eaton (1865-1914), who took the pen name Sui Sin Far, is recognized as the first Asian American published fiction writer. The daughter of a Chinese mother and an English father, she lived in England until age seven, when her family moved to Montreal. By twenty-five, Eaton was publishing articles about Montreal's Chinese American community in English-language newspapers. At thirty, she began to assert her identity as a Chinese American writer (despite her ability to "pass" as white), writing stories about Chinese Americans at a time when the United States Congress maintained the Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned Chinese immigration to the United States.