SOURCE: Solberg, S. E. “Sui Sin Far/Edith Eaton: First Chinese-American Fictionist.” MELUS 8, no. 1 (spring 1981): 27-39.

In the following essay, Solberg discusses the significance of Far's Asian-American identity to central themes in her short fiction.

Both her photographs and her own testimony seem to indicate that Edith Maud Eaton (1865-1914) could have “passed” into the majority society with little trouble.¹ Moreover, although her mother was Chinese, Edith was unacquainted with her mother's native language, except for a few phrases, during her early years; in fact, she had very little contact with Asians or Eurasians, except for her own large group of siblings. Yet when she began to publish stories and articles, she chose to write chiefly about China and Chinese-Americans, and she wrote under the nom de plume of Sui Sin Far (occasionally Sui Seen or Sin Fah).²

Such public identification with a group which was treated so...