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Article Dans Une Revue Revue Française d'Etudes Américaines Année : 2013

"The mental portfolio of an Eurasian" : Edith Maude Eaton/Sui Sin Far – double héritage ou double dépossession?

Résumé

This article focuses on early twentieth-century Eurasian writer Edith Maude Eaton/Sui Sin Far, widely recognized today as the foremother of Chinese American letters. Her writings testify to the irreducible tensions arising from her own bi-racial legacy and to her complex positioning within the dominant Eurocentric tradition of American literature. Sui Sin Far saw herself as a “connecting link [between] Occidentals and Orientals”; however, this article analyses the way her texts problematize such an optimistic sense of a hyphenated identity. In contrast to the assertive verticality that is associated with the notion of heritage, Edith Maude Eaton/Sui Sin Far’s autobiographical and fictional works define a wavering space whereby double inheritance runs the risk of proving to be double dispossession. However, this locus of tension is what elicits a poetic art of in-betweenness, which has enabled Sui Sin Far to found a literary tradition, a literary line not exempt, in its turn, of ambiguities.
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Dates et versions

hal-02428057 , version 1 (04-01-2020)

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  • HAL Id : hal-02428057 , version 1

Citer

Marie-Agnès Gay. "The mental portfolio of an Eurasian" : Edith Maude Eaton/Sui Sin Far – double héritage ou double dépossession?. Revue Française d'Etudes Américaines, 2013, 137 (3), pp.65-79. ⟨hal-02428057⟩
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