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 Numé: 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 herself—capable, clever, and endlessly inventive.
|Acknowledgments ixIntroduction by Linda Trinh Moser xi
PART 1: SHORT FICTION
A Half Caste 3
Two Converts 11
Kirishima-san 19
Margot 29
Eyes That Saw Not 38 (Written with Bertrand W. Babcock)
A Contract 50
The Loves of Sakura Jiro and the Three Headed Maid 60
Miss Lily and Miss Chrysanthemum: The Love Story of Two Japanese Girls in Chicago 67
The Wrench of Chance 78
Manoeuvres of O-Yasu-san: The Little Joke on Mrs. Tom and Mr. Middleton 97
A Neighbor's Garden, My Own and a Dream One 109
Delia Dissents: Her Diary Records the End of a Great Endeavor 122
Elspeth 130
PART 2: NONFICTION
The Half Caste 149
The Japanese Drama and the Actor 154
The Marvelous Miniature Trees of Japan: These Curious Effects Are Only Attained after Generations of Patient Toil 161
Every-day Life in Japan 165
The Japanese in America 173
Preface to Chinese-Japanese Cook Book 178 (written with Sara Bosse)|
"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."—Canadian 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 works—some newly discovered, others long awaited by scholars—ranges from breathless magazine romance to story melodrama and provides a riveting introduction to a unique literary personality."—Diana 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.
