Born Winnifred Eaton to a British father and Chinese mother, Onoto Watanna was the first novelist of Chinese descent published in the United States. Eaton "became" Watanna to escape Americans' scorn of the Chinese and to capitalize on their fascination with all things Japanese.
This volume includes nineteen of Watanna's shorter works, including thirteen short stories and six essays. "A Half Caste," the earliest essay, appeared in 1898, a year before Miss NumΓ©: A Japanese-American Romance, the first of her bestselling novels. The last short story, "Elspeth," appeared in 1923. Some of Watanna's fictional characters will remind readers of the delicate but tragic Madame Butterfly, while others foreshadow types like the trickster in Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey (where Watanna makes a cameo appearance). Throughout, Watanna tells stories of people very much like herselfβcapable, clever, and endlessly inventive.
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Cover
Title Page
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part 1: Short Fiction
A Half Caste
Two Converts
Kirishima-san
Margot
Eyes that Saw Not
A Contract
The Loves of Sakura Jiro and the Three Headed Maid
Miss Lily and Miss Chrysanthemum: the Love Story of Two Japanese Girls in Chicago
The Wrench of Chance
The Manoeuvres of O-yasu-san: the Little Joke on Mrs. Tom and Mr. Middleton
A Neighbor's Garden, my Own and a Dream One
Delia dissents: her diary records the end of a great endeavor
Elspeth
Part 2: Nonfiction
The Half Caste
The Japanese Drama and the Actor
The marvelous miniature trees of japan: these curious effects are only attained after generations of patient toil
Every-day Life in Japan
The Japanese in America
Preface to Chinese-Japanese Cook Book|
"Informative and reflective, thoughtful, and thought-provoking, "A Half Caste" and Other Writings opens new possibilities for reading and writing about Asian American literature and for (re)considering the discourse of orientalism and its role in the development of personal and literary strategies for self-expression, social critique, and survival."βCanadian Literature
"What did it mean to be a 'half caste' in early twentieth-century North America? Winnifred Eaton lived that experience, and, as Onoto Watanna, she wrote about it. This collection of her short worksβsome newly discovered, others long awaited by scholarsβranges from breathless magazine romance to story melodrama and provides a riveting introduction to a unique literary personality."βDiana Birchall, author of Onoto Watanna: The Story of Winnifred Eaton
|Onoto Watanna was born Winnifred Eaton in 1875 in Montreal. A prolific writer, she contributed magazine articles, cowrote a cookbook, and wrote screenplays and scenarios for Hollywood in addition to publishing popular novels like A Japanese Nightingale (later adapted for Broadway) and The Heart of Hyacinth. She died in 1954.