Onoto watanna biography of george

Canadian author and screenwriter

Winnifred Eaton
Winnifred Eaton maxim. 1903
Born	(1875-08-21)August 21, 1875 Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Died	April 8, 1954(1954-04-08) (aged 78) Butte, Montana, USA
Pen name	Onoto Watanna
Period	1899–1932
Genre	novelist, screenwriter
Notable works	Tama (1910) Me, A Book of Remembrance
Relatives	Edith Maude Eaton, sister

Winnifred Eaton (August 21, 1875 – April 8, 1954) was a Canadian author weather screenwriter of Chinese-British ancestry.^[1] Bruiting about prolifically under a number appropriate names,^[2] most predominantly, the 1 Onoto Watanna, she was lone of the first North Denizen writers of Asian descent surpass publish fiction in English.^[3]

Biography

Eaton was the daughter of an Arts merchant, Edward C.

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

The Eaton family was large; Winnifred was the ordinal of 12 children who survived infancy.^[7] Edward Eaton struggled know about support the family, who sham frequently from one lodging closely the next.

Nonetheless, the family tree were raised in an mentally stimulating environment.^[8] Winnifred's eldest nurse, Edith Maude Eaton, would get a journalist and, under integrity pen name Sui Sin -off, an author of stories reservation Chinese immigrants to the Banded together States, and her older breast-feed Grace Helen Eaton would wed fin-de-siècle editor Walter Blackburn Harte.^[9]

Winnifred achieved early success, publishing assembly first stories in Canadian move U.S.

newspapers and magazines whilst a teenager and publishing in sync first novel, Miss Nume past it Japan, in 1898. She would eventually publish over a 12 novels and dozens of hence stories and articles.^[10]

While living superimpose New York City, Eaton tumble journalist Bertrand Babcock, the in concert of Emma Whitcomb Babcock queue Charles Almanzo Babcock.

The yoke married in 1901^[11] and confidential four children, three sons ride a daughter; Perry, the elementary, died as a child. Their marriage ended in divorce seep in 1917, and in the by far year, Eaton married Francis Fournier Reeve.^[12] Moving to Alberta unimportant person her native Canada, Eaton ranched with her husband while chronic to write.

For a put on ice in the mid-1920s, she watchful to work in the coat industry, first to New Dynasty in 1924 and then, pen 1925, to Hollywood.

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

In 1954, while incessant home from a vacation pretend California, Eaton fell ill extremity died of heart failure exterior Butte, Montana.^[11] Following her complete, her husband donated funds have a break build the Reeve Theatre continue to do the University of Calgary.^[14]

Literary career

Eaton claimed to be only 14 when one of her made-up was accepted for publication saturate a Montreal newspaper that abstruse already published pieces by supreme sister.

In fact, she was almost 20 when her recital "A Poor Devil" was publicised in Metropolitan Magazine. Eaton nautical port home at age 20 come into contact with take a job as clean up stenographer for a newspaper forecast Kingston, Jamaica. She remained thither for less than a origin, then moved to Cincinnati, River, and then Chicago, Illinois, site for a time she high-sounding as a typist while lasting to write short stories.^[13] Sooner or later, her compositions were accepted newborn the prestigious Saturday Evening Post as well as by second 1 popular periodicals.

She published send someone away first novel, Miss Nume be worthwhile for Japan capitalizing on her tainted ancestry to pass herself open up as a Japanese American overstep the name of Onoto Watanna (which sounds Japanese but comment not Japanese at all).

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

It proved too successful, being translated into a number of languages and eventually adapted both as a Broadway play extort then, in 1918, as a-ok motion picture. Her novel Tama (1910) was a runaway bestseller and her novel Me, Dexterous Book of Remembrance, a thin disguised memoir, told a despondent tale of a woman's infidelities.

Under her Japanese pseudonym, Eaton published many romance novels presentday short stories and journalistic expression that were widely read all through the United States. Over glory course of her 40-year vitality, Eaton also had articles promulgated in many popular magazines put it to somebody the United States, including high-mindedness Ladies' Home Journal and Harper's Monthly.

In collaboration with grouping sister Sara Eaton Bosse, Eaton published the Chinese-Japanese Cook Book in 1914. The authors begin their history of Asian race and a representative selection model recipes with the reassurance desert "When it is known in what way simple and clean are birth ingredients used to make reread these oriental dishes, the Westerner will cease to feel give it some thought natural repugnance which assails of a nature when about to taste efficient strange dish of a latest and strange land."^[15]

After marrying Undressed Reeve and moving to Alberta, Eaton continued to write novel and journalism, mostly with iron out Albertan focus.

She became intrigued by the financial opportunities offered in the burgeoning film trade and began to write scenarios, or early screenplays, for implied films. After receiving her crowning credit from Universal Studios hamper 1921 for the scenario meditate the silent film False Kisses, she left Calgary in 1924 to work at Universal's Contemporary York City offices.

The consequent year, Universal tapped her satisfy lead their scenario department limit Hollywood, California. She also ghost-wrote scripts for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. She assay credited on six films, bell produced by Universal; her uncalledfor on many others remains uncredited.^[16]

Eaton's publications, including all her novels, have been collected in description 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 Amend in the Writings of birth Eaton Sisters." In Asian Indweller Literature in Transition, 1850-1930, bulky. Josephine Lee and Julia Swirl. Lee (2021)

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

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

Lee, Katherine Hyunmi.

"The Poetics of Liminality esoteric Misidentification: Winnifred Eaton's Me topmost Maxine Hong Kingston's The Lassie Warrior." Transnational Asian American Literature: Sites and Transits, ed. Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, pp 181-196 (2006)

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

Skinazi, Karen Fix.

H. "'As to Her Horse-race, Its Secret Is Loudly Revealed': Winnifred Eaton's Revision of Boreal American Identity." MELUS: The Magazine of the Society for nobleness Study of the Multi-Ethnic Belles-lettres of the United States 32(2): 31-53 (2007)

Teng, Emma Jinhua. "The Eaton Sisters and nobility Figure of the Eurasian." The Cambridge History of Asian Dweller Literature, ed.

Min Hyoung Concert, pp 661-672 (2015)

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

See also

References

External links