| This project contextualizes and analyzes the writings of Winnifred Eaton, the first published Asian American novelist. Of biracial descent (Chinese-British), Eaton was born into an extremely hostile North American racial environment, as demonstrated by the passage of the 1882 Exclusion Act in the United States and a similar law in Canada in 1885. Keenly aware of this Sinophobic sentiment, she exploited her biracial heritage by adopting the Japanese-sounding pseudonym “Onoto Watanna” and “passing” as Japanese. She shrewdly combined the novelty and “authenticity” of her authorial persona with her knowledge of Western narratives and promoted herself as the first Japanese author writing specifically for Western readers. Her works often catered to Western misconceptions and fantasies and featured appealing, though cliched images: lush settings, naive and childlike Japanese heroines, geisha girls, and spectacular acts of hari-kari.; I examine the historical, political, and cultural contexts which compelled Eaton's assumption of a Japanese persona and signified the emergence of a discursive movement I am calling North American Orientalism. At the end of the nineteenth century, North American Orientalism was an intricately articulated ideology that functioned as a containment strategy which belied anxieties about Asian immigration, international politics, and shifting gender roles. North American Orientalism depended upon a commodification of Western constructions of the Orient, especially within the domestic realm, and countered shifting constructions of race by revising definitions of whiteness. Within this context, Eaton's manipulation of her Japanese persona and her fictional constructions of Japan reveal the imbrications of class, race, and gender that were an integral part of the North American racial and sexual landscape. Her exploitation of stereotypes alternately promoted and subverted North American Orientalist views; by situating narrative forms and figures such as the autobiography, the Madame Butterfly figure, and the romance novel, within Japanese settings and/or under an authorial guise, Eaton could explore racial and sexual politics, provide commentary about the implications of “Othering,” and celebrate racial and cultural hybridity. Her works are thus crucial to Asian American literature not only because of their historical value, but also because their thematic complexities offer insights into North American constructions of race, gender, class, and nation, the influence of these constructions on the psychic processes of identification, and the relationship between various literary genres and dominant ideologies. |
