This document contains the agenda for an EWRT 1B class. The agenda includes a quiz, a discussion of essay tips and terms, a lecture on author Sui Sin Far, an in-class writing prompt, and a discussion of essay #4. It also lists some common writing errors to avoid and provides definitions for the terms "transsexuals," "transphobia," "persona," "plot," and "point of view." There is background information provided on author Sui Sin Far and an excerpt from one of her works. The class will discuss this excerpt and address how and why Far resists passing as a different ethnicity. For homework, students are assigned to outline essay #4 and respond to a discussion

1. EWRT 1B

2. Agenda
 Quiz
 Essay Tips
 Terms
 Lecture: Sui Sin Far
 Discussion: Far: QHQ
 In-class writing: How and why does Far
resist? What are the social implications
of her doing so?
 Discussion/Writing: Essay #4

3. You have ten minutes
 Write down the  Write down the
name of every name of every text
author we have read we have read this
this quarter. quarter.
 For each correct  For each correct
answer (last and first answer (including
name) you get one italics or quotation
point. marks) you get one
point.

4. Common errors that are easy to
avoid.
 Italicize (underline if you are
handwriting) titles of books, novels,
plays, and journals.
 Put essays, short stories, and articles in
quotation marks.
 Write about literature in the present
tense: Jess grows up, not grew up.
Feinberg writes about a young girl…

5. • Introduce all quotations. Do not just drop them in
your essay. Feinberg writes, “…”; Jess says, “…”;
Kennedy argues.
• Explain and/or analyze quotations after you
introduce them. Tell the reader why you think the
quotation supports your assertion.
• Do not ask questions in your essay. Answer them
instead.
• Consider the difference between “quote” and
“quotation”: Quote is a verb meaning to repeat the
exact words of another with the acknowledgement of
the source. A quotation is a phrase or a sentence
from a book or a speech that reflects the author's
profound thoughts. Technically, you quote a

6. Terms
 Transsexuals: People who indicate that they are of one gender
trapped in the body of the other gender. A person who has
altered or intends to alter her/hir/his anatomy, either through
surgery, hormones, or other means, to better match her/hir/his
chosen gender identity. This group of people is often divided into
pre-op (operative), post-op, or non-op transsexuals. Due to cost,
not all transsexuals can have genital surgery. Others do not feel
that surgery is necessary, but still remain a transsexual identity.
 a. Non-operative: People who do not intend to change their primary sex
characteristics, either because of a lack of a desire or the inability to do
so. They may or may not alter their secondary sex characteristics
through the use of hormones.
 b. Pre-operative: People who have started the procedure to reassign
their primary sex characteristics, but have not yet had the surgery. This
covers both those people who have just begun the procedure and those
who are very close to the actual surgery.
 c. Post-operative: People who have had the actual genital surgery

7. Transphobia:
 The fear or hatred of transgender and
transsexual people. Like biphobia, this term
was created to call attention to the ways
prejudice against trans people differs from
prejudice against other queer people. There is
often transphobia in lesbian, gay and bisexual
communities, as well as heterosexual or
straight communities.

8.  Persona: a character in drama or fiction or the part
any one sustains in the world or in a book. Persona
also denotes the “I” who speaks in a poem or novel.
 Plot: a plan or scheme to accomplish a purpose. In

9. • Point of view: a specified position or method of consideration
and appraisal. It may also be an attitude, judgment, or opinion.
In literature, physical point of view has to do with the position in
time and space from which a writer approaches, views, and
describes his or her material. Mental point of view involves an
author’s feeling and attitude toward his or her subject.
Personal point of view concerns the relation through which a
writer narrates or discusses a subject, whether first, second, or
third person.
• Prose : the ordinary form of spoken and written language
whose unit is the sentence, rather than the line as it is in
poetry. The term applies to all expressions in language that do
not have a regular rhythmic pattern.

10. Sui Sin Far
Edith Maud Eaton
1865-1914

11. Sui Sin Far, born Edith Maude Eaton, was
the first writer of Asian descent published in
North America
She was born in England, in 1865 to a Chinese mother and an
English (white) father. Eaton's mother was apparently schooled in
England although she returned to China after her education was
completed. Eaton's father was a merchant who did trading in China; it
was on one of his business trips that he met and fell in love with his
future wife. According to Eaton scholars, Amy Ling and Annette
White-Parks, "interracial marriage was taboo in both cultures[; thus,]
theirs was an unusual union." At age seven, Eaton and her family left
England and immigrated to Hudson City, New York, and in the early
1870s, settled in a Montreal suburb.

12. Eaton started her career at Hugh Graham's Montreal
Daily Star newspaper as a typesetter at age eighteen.
Her first short stories were published in the Dominion Illustrated
in 1888; she also maintained her administrative duties as well
as submitted newspaper articles. It was in her journalistic
writing that Eaton openly identified herself as a Chinese
American and explained her biracial heritage to her readers.
She wrote under the pseudonym Sui Sin Far, a childhood
nickname that means "water lily" in Chinese. Her sister,
Winnifred Eaton, also a writer, used Onoto Watanna as her
penname.

13. Yi Bu Wang Hua
In the mid 1890s, Eaton moved briefly to Jamaica, where she contracted
malaria, from which she never quite recovered. During the next ten years,
until 1909, she lived in Seattle and San Francisco. She wrote more articles
and short stories and gained a literary reputation. Chinese American
women were at the center of much of Eaton's writing, and she worked to
break down cultural stereotypes. In 1909, Eaton moved to Boston where
she compiled a full-length selection of short stories, Mrs. Spring Fragrance,
which was published in Chicago in 1912. In 1913, Eaton, stricken by
horrible rheumatism and bad health, returned to Montreal. She died on April
7, 1914 and is buried in the Protestant Cemetery there. In gratitude for her
work on their behalf, the Chinese community erected a special headstone
on her tomb inscribed with the characters "Yi bu wang hua" ("The righteous
one does not forget China").

14. A Spiritual Foremother
Known as "spiritual foremother of contemporary Eurasian
authors," Eaton has been the subject of two dissertations,
a literary biography, and numerous articles. Notable Sui
Sin Far scholars include S. E. Solberg, Amy Ling, James
Doyle, and Annette White-Parks.
Amy Ling writes, "If we set Sui Sin Far into the context of
her time and place, in late nineteenth-century sinophobic
and imperialistic Euro-American nations, then we admit
that for her, a Eurasian woman who could pass as white, to
choose to champion the Chinese and working-class
women and to identify herself as such, publicly and in print,
an act of great determination and courage."

15. The Reception of Chinese by White Americans
To appreciate the work of Edith Eaton fully, we must discuss its historical and
social context, namely the reception of Chinese by white Americans before and
during her period. Though the Chinese were never enslaved in this country, as
were Africans, they were brought here in large numbers as indentured laborers.
The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) was only repealed in 1943 and naturalized
citizenship for Asians was permitted in 1954, long after African-Americans and
American Indians were recognized as American citizens. Initially attracted to
California by the discovery of gold in the mid-nineteenth century, by the l860s
thousands of Chinese laborers were enticed here to construct the mountainous
western section of the transcontinental railroad. Almost from the beginning,
prejudice against them was strong. They were regarded as an alien race with
peculiar customs and habits that made them inassimilable in a nation that
wanted to remain white; their hard-working, frugal ways and their willingness to
work for lower wages than whites rendered them an economic threat and thus
targets of racial violence.

16. Spring Fragrance
and Other
Writings
By Sui Sin Far
This text includes “Leaves
from the Mental Portfolio
of an Eurasian”

17. Passing and Sui Sin Far
“Ah, indeed!” he exclaims. “Who would have thought it at first
glance? Yet now I see the difference between her and other
children. What a peculiar coloring! Her mother’s eyes and hair and
her father’s features, I presume. Very interesting little creature!”
I had been called from play for the purpose of inspection. I do not
return to it. For the rest of the evening I hide myself behind a hall
door and refuse to show myself until it is time to go home.
Why does Far hide after this experience?
How does this moment contribute to her identity development?

18. “Look!” says Charlie. “Those men in there are Chinese!” Eagerly I gaze into the
long low room. With the exception of my mother, who is English bred with
English ways and manner of dress, I have never seen a Chinese person. The
two men within the store are uncouth specimens of their race, drest in working
blouses and pantaloons with queues hanging down their backs. I recoil with a
sense of shock.
“Oh, Charlie,” I cry. “Are we like that?”
“Well, we’re Chinese, and they’re Chinese, too, so we must be!” returns my
seven year old brother.
“Of course you are,” puts in a boy who has followed us down the street, and
who lives near us and has seen my mother: “Chinky, Chinky, Chinaman, yellow-
face, pig-tail, rat-eater.” A number of other boys and several little girls join in
with him.
“Better than you,” shouts my brother, facing the crowd. He is younger and
smaller than any there, and I am even more insignificant than he; but my spirit
revives.
“I’d rather be Chinese than anything else in the world,” I scream.
Why does Far fight after this experience?
How does this moment contribute to her identity development?

19. The greatest temptation was in the thought of getting far away from where I was
known, to where no mocking cries of “Chinese!” “Chinese!” could reach.
Here Sui seems to want to disappear. Given her desire to escape prejudice, why does
she become a champion of the Chinese instead of “passing” as we know so many
others do during this time? In other words, which of her life experiences compel her to
refuse to pass as white? How does she become the woman who speaks the lines
below?
With a great effort I raise my eyes from my plate. “Mr. K.,” I say, addressing my
employer, “the Chinese people may have no souls, no expression on their faces, be
altogether beyond the pale of civilization, but whatever they are, I want you to
understand that I am—I am a Chinese.”

20. Sui Sin Far

21. QHQ: “Leaves from the Mental
Portfolio of an Eurasian”
 What made Sui so much different than her
siblings?
 Why is it that Sui Sin’s has the strength to be
herself and not pass?
 Why was this necessary?
“You were walking with a Chinaman yesterday,” accuses
an acquaintance.
“Yes, what of it?”
“You ought not to. It isn’t right.”
“Not right to walk with one of my mother’s people? Oh,
indeed!”
I cannot reconcile his notion of righteousness with my own.

22. Why wouldn’t Sui attempt to pass for Japanese per
her husband’s request for sake of drama within the
family?
Why did Sui choose not to pass as a different, more
likable nationality?
Do you think Sui’s life would be much different if she
chose to pass as a Japanese?
Would life have been easier or harder for Sui if she
had been entirely Chinese?
Would Sui Sin Far have gotten along in a
neighborhood full of other minorities, not of her own
bloodlines?

23. In-class writing: How and why
does Far resist passing?
• Far refuses to pass as white. Why? What
convinces her to consciously and intentionally
reveal her racial identity?
• Consider how Far resists passing. Which
behaviors can you specifically identify?

24. Posting: Self-Assessment
The blogging post points (200) require self-
assessment. Consider three aspects of your
responses:
• First, how many of the posts did you make?
• Second, what was the quality of your
response?
• Third, how timely were your submissions?
Write an argument justifying your grade.
This is due in our penultimate class

26. Homework
 Post #28 Complete and Developed
Outline and thesis for Essay #4
 Post #29: What are the advantages of
resisting passing? What are the long-
term social effects?
Studying: Terms
 Write your self-assessment evaluations
(Due on the penultimate class day)