A "Half Caste" and Other Writings
by
Onoto Watanna
What did it mean to be a 'half caste' in early twentieth-century North America? This collection of short works ranges from magazine romance to story melodrama and provides an introduction to a unique literary personality - Onoto Watanna. It includes nineteen - thirteen stories and six essays - intended to show the versatility of her writing.
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Complete description
'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 (1875-1954) was born Winnifred Eaton, the daughter of a British father and a Chinese mother. The first novelist of Chinese descent to be published in the United States, she 'became' Japanese to escape Americans' scorn of the Chinese and to capitalize on their fascination with things Japanese. The earliest essay here, "A Half Caste," appeared in 1898, a year before "Miss Num: A Japanese-American Romance", the first of her best-selling novels. The last story, "Elspeth," appeared in 1923. Of Watanna's numerous shorter works, this volume includes nineteen - thirteen stories and six essays - intended to show the scope and versatility of her writing.
While some of Watanna's fictional characters will remind today's readers of the delicate but tragic Madame Butterfly, others foreshadow such types as the trickster in Maxine Hong Kingston's "Tripmaster Monkey" (a novel in which Onoto Watanna makes a cameo appearance). Watanna's characters are always capable, clever, and inventive - molded in the author's own image.
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General info
Publisher & Imprint:
University of Illinois Press
City:
Baltimore
Pages:
208
More info:
height 229 mm
width 152 mm
weight 315 gr
thickness 19 mm
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Age recommended:
Professional and scholarly
Subject Indexing & Classification
Dewey:(DC21) 813.52
Library of Congress Subject: PR9199.3.W Asian Americans - Fiction.
Record updated at:
16 May, 2013
time:
19:06
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