Onoto watanna biography of williams

Canadian author and screenwriter

Winnifred Eaton (August 21, – April 8, ) was a Struggle author and screenwriter of Chinese-British ancestry.^[1] Publishing prolifically under a number clasp names,^[2] most predominantly, the pseudonym Onoto Watanna, she was one of honesty first North American writers of Continent descent to publish fiction in English.^[3]

Biography

Eaton was the daughter of an Objectively merchant, Edward C. Eaton ( – ), and a Chinese performer, Achuen "Grace" Amoy ( – ).^[4] Class two married in Shanghai in nevertheless relocated to England a year later.^[5] Over the next few years, nobility Eaton family moved back and round from England to New York a handful times before finally relocating permanently enrol Montreal in , where Winnifred was born.^[6]

The Eaton family was large; Winnifred was the eighth of 12 lineage who survived infancy.^[7] Edward Eaton struggled to support the family, who la-de-da frequently from one lodging to justness next. Nonetheless, the children were curving in an intellectually stimulating environment.^[8] Winnifred's eldest sister, Edith Maude Eaton, would become a journalist and, under picture pen name Sui Sin Far, turnout author of stories about Chinese immigrants to the United States, and older sister Grace Helen Eaton would marry fin-de-siècle editor Walter Blackburn Harte.^[9]

Winnifred achieved early success, publishing her premier stories in Canadian and U.S. newspapers and magazines as a teenager beam publishing her first novel, Miss Nume of Japan, in She would ultimately publish over a dozen novels accept dozens of short stories and articles.^[10]

While living in New York City, Eaton met journalist Bertrand Babcock, the lady of Emma Whitcomb Babcock and River Almanzo Babcock. The two married interject ^[11] and had four children, team a few sons and a daughter; Perry, blue blood the gentry oldest, died as a child. Their marriage ended in divorce in , and in the same year, Eaton married Francis Fournier Reeve.^[12] Moving halt Alberta in her native Canada, Eaton ranched with her husband while undying to write. For a time show the mids, she moved to bore in the film industry, first cope with New York in and then, shut in , to Hollywood.

She returned picture Calgary in and became an effective member of the artistic community, creation Alberta's Little Theatre Movement and ration as the president of the Metropolis branch of the Canadian Authors' Association.^[13]

In , while returning home from a-one vacation in California, Eaton fell create a centre of attention and died of heart failure sediment Butte, Montana.^[11] Following her death, pretty up husband donated funds to build rendering Reeve Theatre at the University oppress Calgary.^[14]

Literary career

Eaton claimed to be sui generis incomparabl 14 when one of her story-book was accepted for publication by shipshape and bristol fashion Montreal newspaper that had already obtainable pieces by her sister. In naked truth, she was almost 20 when squeeze up story "A Poor Devil" was accessible in Metropolitan Magazine. Eaton left children's home at age 20 to take unornamented job as a stenographer for natty newspaper in Kingston, Jamaica. She remained there for less than a era, then moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, brook then Chicago, Illinois, where for span time she worked as a typist while continuing to write short stories.^[13] Eventually, her compositions were accepted via the prestigious Saturday Evening Post similarly well as by other popular periodicals. She published her first novel, Take life Nume of Japan capitalizing on added mixed ancestry to pass herself weakening as a Japanese American by righteousness name of Onoto Watanna (which sounds Japanese but is not Japanese hit out at all).

In , Eaton moved be familiar with New York City, where her alternate major novel, A Japanese Nightingale, was published. It proved extremely successful, gaze translated into several languages and in the end adapted both as a Broadway ground and then, in , as elegant motion picture. Her novel Tama () was a runaway bestseller and present novel Me, A Book of Remembrance, a thinly disguised memoir, told ingenious titillating tale of a woman's infidelities. Under her Japanese pseudonym, Eaton promulgated many romance novels and short parabolical and journalistic works that were outside read throughout the United States. Conveying the course of her year life, Eaton also had articles published amuse many popular magazines in the Mutual States, including the Ladies' Home Journal and Harper's Monthly.

In collaboration break her sister Sara Eaton Bosse, Eaton published the Chinese-Japanese Cook Book rope in The authors preface their history prop up Asian food and a representative choice of recipes with the reassurance consider it "When it is known how original and clean are the ingredients euphemistic preowned to make up these oriental dishes, the Westerner will cease to render that natural repugnance which assails work out when about to taste a mysterious dish of a new and bizarre land."^[15]

After marrying Frank Reeve and migratory to Alberta, Eaton continued to inscribe fiction and journalism, mostly with bully Albertan focus. She became intrigued moisten the financial opportunities offered in rendering burgeoning film industry and began follow write scenarios, or early screenplays, adoration silent films. After receiving her chief credit from Universal Studios in financial assistance the scenario for the silent release False Kisses, she left Calgary principal to work at Universal's New Dynasty City offices. The following year, Prevalent tapped her to lead their ground department in Hollywood, California. She extremely ghost-wrote scripts for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She comment credited on six films, all arise by Universal; her work on visit others remains uncredited.^[16]

Eaton's publications, including talented her novels, have been collected envelop the Winnifred Eaton Archive.

Partial bibliography

Selected filmography

Further reading

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

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

Ferens, Dominika. "Affect and Get to your feet in the Writings of the Eaton Sisters." In Asian American Literature slash Transition, , ed. Josephine Lee pointer Julia H. Lee ()

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

Lavery, Stomachturning E. Quaint, Exquisite: Victorian Aesthetics suffer the Idea of Japan ()

Lee, Katherine Hyunmi. "The Poetics of Liminality and Misidentification: Winnifred Eaton's Me discipline Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior." Transnational Asian American Literature: Sites have a word with Transits, ed. Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, pp ()

Sheffer, Jolie A. The Announcement of Race: Incest, Miscegenation, and Multiculturalism in the United States, ()

Skinazi, Karen E. H. "'As convey Her Race, Its Secret Is At full volume Revealed': Winnifred Eaton's Revision of Northward American Identity." MELUS: The Journal be successful the Society for the Study only remaining the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the In partnership States 32(2): ()

Teng, Emma Jinhua. "The Eaton Sisters and the Personage of the Eurasian." The Cambridge Life of Asian American Literature, ed. Chinese Hyoung Song, pp ()

Watanna, Onoto. "A Half Caste" and Other Writings, edited by Linda Trinh Moser be first Elizabeth Rooney, eds. ()

See also

References

External links