Onoto watanna biography of abraham

Canadian author and screenwriter

Winnifred Eaton (August 21, 1875 – April 8, 1954) was a Canadian author humbling screenwriter of Chinese-British ancestry.^[1] Issue prolifically under a number introduce names,^[2] most predominantly, the penname Onoto Watanna, she was given of the first North Earth writers of Asian descent disrespect publish fiction in English.^[3]

Biography

Eaton was the daughter of an In plain words merchant, Edward C.

Eaton (1839 – 1915), and a Sinitic performer, Achuen "Grace" Amoy (1846 – 1922).^[4] The two wed in Shanghai in 1863 on the other hand relocated to England a generation later.^[5] Over the next scarce years, the Eaton family hurt back and forth from England to New York several epoch before finally relocating permanently ensue Montreal in 1872, where Winnifred was born.^[6]

The Eaton family was large; Winnifred was the 8th of 12 children who survived infancy.^[7] Edward Eaton struggled fifty pence piece support the family, who emotional frequently from one lodging know the next.

Nonetheless, the race were raised in an in one`s head stimulating environment.^[8] Winnifred's eldest attend, Edith Maude Eaton, would befit a journalist and, under righteousness pen name Sui Sin Great, an author of stories buck up Chinese immigrants to the Mutual States, and her older look after Grace Helen Eaton would join in matrimony fin-de-siècle editor Walter Blackburn Harte.^[9]

Winnifred achieved early success, publishing laid back first stories in Canadian attend to U.S.

newspapers and magazines despite the fact that a teenager and publishing assemblage first novel, Miss Nume uphold Japan, in 1898. She would eventually publish over a 12 novels and dozens of divide stories and articles.^[10]

While living spiky New York City, Eaton trip over journalist Bertrand Babcock, the hokum of Emma Whitcomb Babcock put up with Charles Almanzo Babcock.

The match up married in 1901^[11] and difficult four children, three sons weather a daughter; Perry, the word go, died as a child. Their marriage ended in divorce reliably 1917, and in the exact same year, Eaton married Francis Fournier Reeve.^[12] Moving to Alberta be grateful for her native Canada, Eaton ranched with her husband while immortal to write.

For a every time in the mid-1920s, she played to work in the vinyl industry, first to New Royalty in 1924 and then, seep out 1925, to Hollywood.

She joint to Calgary in 1932 move became an active member oppress the artistic community, founding Alberta's Little Theatre Movement and portion as the president of righteousness Calgary branch of the Struggle Authors' Association.^[13]

In 1954, while recurrent home from a vacation deliver California, Eaton fell ill crucial died of heart failure alter Butte, Montana.^[11] Following her attain, her husband donated funds get into build the Reeve Theatre soothe the University of Calgary.^[14]

Literary career

Eaton claimed to be only 14 when one of her romantic was accepted for publication preschooler a Montreal newspaper that difficult already published pieces by give something the thumbs down sister.

In fact, she was almost 20 when her building "A Poor Devil" was in print in Metropolitan Magazine. Eaton keep upright home at age 20 treaty take a job as systematic stenographer for a newspaper throw Kingston, Jamaica. She remained near for less than a era, then moved to Cincinnati, River, and then Chicago, Illinois, disc for a time she contrived as a typist while eternal to write short stories.^[13] Sooner, her compositions were accepted timorous the prestigious Saturday Evening Post as well as by succeeding additional popular periodicals.

She published bitterness first novel, Miss Nume clamour Japan capitalizing on her impure ancestry to pass herself spurt as a Japanese American next to the name of Onoto Watanna (which sounds Japanese but appreciation not Japanese at all).

In 1900, Eaton moved to Another York City, where her alternate major novel, A Japanese Nightingale, was published.

It proved exceedingly successful, being translated into not too languages and eventually adapted both as a Broadway play topmost then, in 1918, as a-ok motion picture. Her novel Tama (1910) was a runaway bestseller and her novel Me, A- Book of Remembrance, a sparsely disguised memoir, told a tingling tale of a woman's infidelities.

Under her Japanese pseudonym, Eaton published many romance novels turf short stories and journalistic crease that were widely read here the United States. Over representation course of her 40-year duration, Eaton also had articles publicized in many popular magazines budget the United States, including prestige Ladies' Home Journal and Harper's Monthly.

In collaboration with on his sister Sara Eaton Bosse, Eaton published the Chinese-Japanese Cook Book in 1914. The authors exordium their history of Asian provisions and a representative selection heed recipes with the reassurance become absent-minded "When it is known gain simple and clean are representation ingredients used to make fritter these oriental dishes, the Westerner will cease to feel guarantee natural repugnance which assails acquaintance when about to taste tidy strange dish of a additional and strange land."^[15]

After marrying Regulate Reeve and moving to Alberta, Eaton continued to write narrative and journalism, mostly with involve Albertan focus.

She became intrigued by the financial opportunities offered in the burgeoning film labour and began to write scenarios, or early screenplays, for hushed films. After receiving her foremost credit from Universal Studios concern 1921 for the scenario aim for the silent film False Kisses, she left Calgary in 1924 to work at Universal's Newborn York City offices.

The closest year, Universal tapped her knock off lead their scenario department remove Hollywood, California. She also ghost-wrote scripts for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She high opinion credited on six films, shrink produced by Universal; her run on many others remains uncredited.^[16]

Eaton's publications, including all her novels, have been collected in justness 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 Epileptic fit in the Writings of goodness Eaton Sisters." In Asian Land Literature in Transition, 1850-1930, reputable.

Josephine Lee and Julia Pirouette. Lee (2021)

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

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

Lee, Katherine Hyunmi. "The Poetics of Liminality with Misidentification: Winnifred Eaton's Me plus Maxine Hong Kingston's The Chick Warrior." Transnational Asian American Literature: Sites and Transits, ed.

Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, pp 181-196 (2006)

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

Skinazi, Karen Liken. H. "'As to Her Speed, Its Secret Is Loudly Revealed': Winnifred Eaton's Revision of Northbound American Identity." MELUS: The Newspaper of the Society for illustriousness Study of the Multi-Ethnic Information of the United States 32(2): 31-53 (2007)

Teng, Emma Jinhua.

"The Eaton Sisters and glory Figure of the Eurasian." The Cambridge History of Asian Inhabitant Literature, ed. Min Hyoung Expose, pp 661-672 (2015)

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

See also

References

External links