SOURCE: Roh-Spaulding, Carol. “‘Wavering’ Images: Mixed-Race Identity in the Stories of Edith Eaton/Sui Sin Far.” In Ethnicity and the American Short Story, edited by Julie Brown, pp. 155-76. New York: Garland, 1997.

In the following essay, Roh-Spaulding examines the complexities of Far's self-proclaimed Chinese-American identity, asserting that her short stories “complicate traditional narratives of assimilation and amalgamation with tales of failed cultural mixing and conflicted identity.”

The hybrid flower is the saddest flower of all.

—“Leaves from the Mental Portfolio of an Eurasian,” 1909

From tales of the tragic mulatto (or quadroon or octoroon) to Harlem Renaissance novels of passing, from Injun Joe to Joe Christmas, and from Leslie Silko to Louise Erdrich, race mixture has long been a subject in American fiction. Most literary depictions and critical discussions of race mixture, however, have focused on the African American mulatto and the “half-blood” Indian—on characters best known as...