Traveller
Sui Sin Far/Edith Eaton (SSF/EE; 1865-1914) started her life as a traveller, crossing the Atlantic several times before she was six. This was a pattern she continued into adulthood, and it greatly shaped her career as a writer of fiction, journalism, editorials and autobiography, spanning the turn of the 20th Century. As she wrote in an essay published in 1912, "Ever and again…whenever I had a little money put by, some inward impulse would drive me to work my way across the Continent…"
Work her way across the North American continent she did - numerous times. After emigrating to Montreal from England with her family as a child, SSF/EE worked as a journalist in Quebec, Northern Ontario, Washington and California. She even ventured beyond North America entirely yet again as an adult: for six months, she lived in Kingston, Jamaica, where she wrote a column as the "Canadian Firefly", chronicling her experiences as the "girl of the period."
This mobility is striking - as a single woman of mixed race, often in poor health, SSF/EE was in a unique position, able to comment on social and political issues from a perspective not often represented in the writing of her time, dominated as it was by white male writers. SSF/EE was also not hesitant to take on different personas and voices in her work, including writing as a male Chinese immigrant, Wing Sing, for a series in LA Express.
Like many seasoned travellers, SSF/EE was not content to settle for long. "I roam backward and forward across the continent. When I am East, my heart is West. When I am West, my heart is East" ("Leaves"). This restlessness left us with a legacy of writing from multiple places and multiple perspectives. She spent her last years in Boston (where she published several pieces in the Boston Globe) and is buried Montreal, Quebec.
Read articles by SSF/EE:
The Girl of the Period - "A Veracious Chronicle of Opinion"
The Girl of the Period - "At Alpha Cottage"
Wing Sing in Montreal
Wing Sing of Los Angeles