SOURCE: Doyle, James. “Sui Sin Far and Onoto Watanna: Two Early Chinese-Canadian Authors.” Canadian Literature, no. 140 (spring 1994): 50-8.

In the following essay, Doyle discusses the influence of a Canadian background on the fiction of Far and her sister Winnifred Eaton, asserting that, while Winnifred wrote predictable formulas of sentimental fiction, Far's fictions explore important issues of ethnic and gender conflict.

Edith Eaton (1865-1914) and Winnifred Eaton Reeve (1875-1954), the daughters of a Chinese mother and an English father, were among the earliest creative writers in Canada to deal with Asian people and topics. As far as I can determine, Edith Eaton was the first professional writer of Chinese ancestry in North America. From 1896 until her death, her short stories and articles on the experience of being Chinese or Eurasian in the New World appeared in various magazines and newspapers in Canada and the United States. These writings were...