Onoto Watanna: The Story of Winnifred Eaton (Asian American Experience) - Hardcover

Birchall, Diana

4.12

17 ratings by Goodreads

9780252026072: Onoto Watanna: The Story of Winnifred Eaton (Asian American Experience)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0252026071 ISBN 13: 9780252026072

Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2001

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In 1901, the young Winnifred Eaton arrived in New York City with literary ambitions, journalistic experience, and the manuscript for A Japanese Nightingale, the novel that would sell many thousands of copies and make her famous. Hers is a real Horatio Alger story, with fascinating added dimensions of race and gender.

While commercially successful women writers were uncommon a century ago, Winnifred Eaton (1875-1954) cultivated a particular persona to set herself apart even within this rare breed. Born to a British father and a Chinese mother, Winnifred decided to capitalize on her exotic appearance while protecting herself from Americans' scorn of Chinese: she "became" Japanese, assuming the pen name Onoto Watanna. While her eldest sister, Edith Maude Eaton (now acknowledged as the mother of Asian American fiction), was writing stories of downtrodden Chinese immigrants under the name Sui Sin Far, Winnifred's Japanese romance novels and stories became all the rage, thrusting her into the glittering world of New York literati.

Diana Birchall chronicles the sometimes desperate, sometimes canny, always bold life of her "bad grandmother," about whom she knew almost nothing until her own adulthood. Here are the details of an amazing professional career as a journalist, a bestselling novelist, and a Hollywood scriptwriting prot�g�e of Carl Laemmle at Universal Studios.

Here, too, is the personal saga of a woman who bore "a book and a baby a year" during her troubled first marriage--and who, at the age of fifty-six, wooed back her estranged second husband when her Hollywood career hit the skids during the Great Depression. Having achieved early fame as a Japanese romance writer, Winnifred later jettisoned the kimono and wrote books (including one entitled Cattle) set on the plains of Alberta, where her husband owned a ranch.

A chameleon? A desperate poseur? A shrewd businesswoman? She was all that, and much more, as Diana Birchall demonstrates. Navigating the shifting boundary between life and art, Birchall probes Winnifred's conflicting stories, personal tempests, and remarkable accomplishments, presenting a woman whose career was "sensational" in every sense.

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Book Description:

The fascinating biography of a nearly fictional woman who overcame race and gender barriers to achieve amazing success

Born to a British father and a Chinese mother, Winnifred Eaton (1875-1954) decided to capitalize on her exotic appearance while protecting herself from Americans' scorn of Chinese: she "became" Japanese, assuming the pen name Onoto Watanna. While her eldest sister (now acknowledged as the mother of Asian American fiction), was writing stories of downtrodden Chinese immigrants under the name Sui Sin Far, Winnifred's Japanese romance novels and stories became all the rage, thrusting her into the glittering world of New York literati. Diana Birchall chronicles the sometimes desperate, sometimes canny, and always bold course of her grandmother’s amazing professional career as a journalist, a bestselling novelist, and a Hollywood scriptwriting prot�g�e of Carl Laemmle at Universal Studios.

From the Inside Flap:

"This finely crafted, meticulously researched, and very witty biography of Onoto Watanna/Winnifred Eaton makes the fascinating novelist come alive in all her human contradictions. Birchall's prose reflects her grandmother's gift for spellbinding narrative, mirroring the disarming charm, grace, energy, and vigor of Watanna--as woman and writer--herself. Poignant and moving, but always alive to humor, Birchall's riveting biography is a timely gift to students of Asian American literature, filling a century-long void in Eaton scholarship." -- Samina Najmi, Wheaton College

"Immensely enjoyable reading. . . . Eaton is a fascinating woman, both in her personal and professional choices and in the many lives she led and the many worlds she inhabited. This is a story that must be told, and Birchall is the ideal person for the job. She tells Eaton's story with affection, energy, and sensitivity to her subject's unique voice and personality." -- Eve Oishi, California State University at Long Beach

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