Sui Sin Far

Here’s what the NAAL editors write about Far:

With two names and two identities, Sui Sin Far wrote fiction that also negotiated several different worlds.  She wrote of social and domestic life in West Coast Chinese American families, which -- like East European Jewish families in Cahan’s New York -- were in a turmoil of reinvention, reconciling the traditional with the new, and conditions of alienation with deep drives to belong.

A parallel drama may be underway in regard to narrative fiction itself: Sui Sin Far is appearing in media [magazines, etc.] dominated by followers of Howells, James, Wharton, Chopin, and others who established a style and an array of expectations with regard to the Realist short story.

• Can we examine the style and structure of “Mrs. Spring Fragrance” as a mingling of acceptance and resistance?
• If we glance quickly over these pages in NAAL, what patterns do we see -- how long, for example, is a typical descriptive paragraph here, in Far, compared to a paragraph in James or Chopin?
• If these people, these domestic spaces, might be expected to seem strange to a typical (white) reader, what might be the reasons for not meticulously presenting the details and differences?
• In these encounters among family members, how are people portrayed as speaking, and what are the risks of transcribing Cantonese speech in this way?
• The story ends with Mr. Spring Fragrance exclaiming about the “detestable” quality of American poetry.  Why does he say that?  What might such “poetry” represent as a challenge not only to his aesthetics but to his family values?