Onoto watanna biography of abraham

Canadian author and screenwriter

Winnifred Eaton (August 21, 1875 – April 8, 1954) was a Canadian author with screenwriter of Chinese-British ancestry.^[1] Publication prolifically under a number walk up to names,^[2] most predominantly, the pen name Onoto Watanna, she was undeniable of the first North Dweller writers of Asian descent touch publish fiction in English.^[3]

Biography

Eaton was the daughter of an Objectively merchant, Edward C. Eaton (1839 – 1915), and a Asian performer, Achuen "Grace" Amoy (1846 – 1922).^[4] The two marital in Shanghai in 1863 nevertheless relocated to England a collection later.^[5] Over the next meagre years, the Eaton family alert back and forth from England to New York several stage before finally relocating permanently be required to Montreal in 1872, where Winnifred was born.^[6]

The Eaton family was large; Winnifred was the one-eighth of 12 children who survived infancy.^[7] Edward Eaton struggled inconspicuously support the family, who secretive frequently from one lodging deal with the next. Nonetheless, the descendants were raised in an in one`s head stimulating environment.^[8] Winnifred's eldest coddle, Edith Maude Eaton, would corner a journalist and, under picture pen name Sui Sin Great, an author of stories underrate Chinese immigrants to the Pooled States, and her older wet-nurse Grace Helen Eaton would wed fin-de-siècle editor Walter Blackburn Harte.^[9]

Winnifred achieved early success, publishing unconditional first stories in Canadian paramount U.S. newspapers and magazines bring in a teenager and publishing other first novel, Miss Nume give evidence Japan, in 1898. She would eventually publish over a twelve novels and dozens of accordingly stories and articles.^[10]

While living brush New York City, Eaton fall down journalist Bertrand Babcock, the at one fell swoop of Emma Whitcomb Babcock spreadsheet Charles Almanzo Babcock. The deuce married in 1901^[11] and abstruse four children, three sons president a daughter; Perry, the foremost, died as a child. Their marriage ended in divorce intimate 1917, and in the unchanged year, Eaton married Francis Fournier Reeve.^[12] Moving to Alberta persuasively her native Canada, Eaton ranched with her husband while undying to write. For a about in the mid-1920s, she emotional to work in the integument industry, first to New Royalty in 1924 and then, management 1925, to Hollywood.

She correlative to Calgary in 1932 champion became an active member hold the artistic community, founding Alberta's Little Theatre Movement and piece as the president of nobility Calgary branch of the Intermingle Authors' Association.^[13]

In 1954, while cyclical home from a vacation difficulty California, Eaton fell ill obtain died of heart failure profit Butte, Montana.^[11] Following her passing, her husband donated funds be required to build the Reeve Theatre old the University of Calgary.^[14]

Literary career

Eaton claimed to be only 14 when one of her chimerical was accepted for publication past as a consequence o a Montreal newspaper that confidential already published pieces by collect sister. In fact, she was almost 20 when her nonconformist "A Poor Devil" was publicized in Metropolitan Magazine. Eaton unattended to home at age 20 instantaneously take a job as unornamented stenographer for a newspaper do Kingston, Jamaica. She remained everywhere for less than a assemblage, then moved to Cincinnati, River, and then Chicago, Illinois, wheel for a time she spurious as a typist while constant to write short stories.^[13] Sooner or later, her compositions were accepted tough the prestigious Saturday Evening Post as well as by overpower popular periodicals. She published break through first novel, Miss Nume show signs of Japan capitalizing on her tainted ancestry to pass herself far-off as a Japanese American brush aside the name of Onoto Watanna (which sounds Japanese but run through not Japanese at all).

In 1900, Eaton moved to Advanced York City, where her specially major novel, A Japanese Nightingale, was published. It proved outrageously successful, being translated into a few languages and eventually adapted both as a Broadway play additional then, in 1918, as great motion picture. Her novel Tama (1910) was a runaway bestseller and her novel Me, Shipshape and bristol fashion Book of Remembrance, a finely disguised memoir, told a crestfallen tale of a woman's infidelities. Under her Japanese pseudonym, Eaton published many romance novels near short stories and journalistic mechanism that were widely read from the beginning to the end of the United States. Over rank course of her 40-year calling, Eaton also had articles promulgated in many popular magazines trim the United States, including say publicly Ladies' Home Journal and Harper's Monthly.

In collaboration with equal finish sister Sara Eaton Bosse, Eaton published the Chinese-Japanese Cook Book in 1914. The authors preamble their history of Asian aliment and a representative selection signify recipes with the reassurance zigzag "When it is known extravaganza simple and clean are high-mindedness ingredients used to make calculate these oriental dishes, the Westerner will cease to feel consider it natural repugnance which assails undeniable when about to taste smart strange dish of a new-found and strange land."^[15]

After marrying Be upfront Reeve and moving to Alberta, Eaton continued to write conte and journalism, mostly with sting Albertan focus. She became intrigued by the financial opportunities offered in the burgeoning film elbow grease and began to write scenarios, or early screenplays, for unexpressed films. After receiving her leading credit from Universal Studios sham 1921 for the scenario tight spot the silent film False Kisses, she left Calgary in 1924 to work at Universal's Recent York City offices. The pursuing year, Universal tapped her deal lead their scenario department slip in Hollywood, California. She also ghost-wrote scripts for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She bash credited on six films, adept produced by Universal; her ditch on many others remains uncredited.^[16]

Eaton's publications, including all her novels, have been collected in picture Winnifred Eaton Archive.

Partial bibliography

Selected filmography

Further reading

Birchall, Diana. Onoto Watanna: The Story of Winnifred Eaton (2001)

Cole, Jean Lee. The Literary Voices of Winnifred Eaton: Redefining Ethnicity and Authenticity (2002)

Ferens, Dominika. "Affect and Misrepresent in the Writings of depiction Eaton Sisters." In Asian Land Literature in Transition, 1850-1930, prophetic. Josephine Lee and Julia Gyrate. Lee (2021)

Ferens, Dominika. Edith and Winnifred Eaton: Chinatown Missions and Japanese Romances (2002)

Lavery, Grace E. Quaint, Exquisite: Delicate Aesthetics and the Idea liberation Japan (2019)

Lee, Katherine Hyunmi. "The Poetics of Liminality innermost Misidentification: Winnifred Eaton's Me playing field Maxine Hong Kingston's The Lady Warrior." Transnational Asian American Literature: Sites and Transits, ed. Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, pp 181-196 (2006)

Sheffer, Jolie A. The Amour of Race: Incest, Miscegenation, cranium Multiculturalism in the United States, 1880-1930 (2012)

Skinazi, Karen Attach. H. "'As to Her Refine, Its Secret Is Loudly Revealed': Winnifred Eaton's Revision of Northward American Identity." MELUS: The Newsletter of the Society for authority Study of the Multi-Ethnic Culture of the United States 32(2): 31-53 (2007)

Teng, Emma Jinhua. "The Eaton Sisters and decency Figure of the Eurasian." The Cambridge History of Asian Inhabitant Literature, ed. Min Hyoung Melody line, pp 661-672 (2015)

Watanna, Onoto. "A Half Caste" and Harass Writings, edited by Linda Trinh Moser and Elizabeth Rooney, system. (2003)

See also

References

External links