Questions:
Mrs.Spring Fragrance
1.In what ways is Mrs.Spring Fragrance Americanized?
2.What is your comment on the characterization of Mrs.Spring Fragrance?
3.What do you think of arranged marriages and the American concept of love as depicted in the story?
4.How do you comment on the demographic pattern of Chinese Americans in the story, particularly as depicted in the first paragraph of the second section? Does it reflect the reality at the turn of the twentieth century?
5.What is the point of supplying the name of different places outside of Chinatown?
6.What are some of the differences between Mr.and Mrs.Spring Fragrance?
7.Can you interpret the story from a feminist perspective?
8.What do you think of the language style of the story?
“Its Wavering Image”
1.What is implied in Pan’s being the daughter of a Chinese father and a white mother? Was it commonplace for Chinese men to marry white women at the time the story was written?
2.What is implied in Pan being “an unusually bright girl”?
3.What happens immediately before Mark Carson betrays Pan? Do you find his betrayal of Pan similar to Judas’ betrayal of Christ? In what way is Pan betrayed?
4.Eaton remained single throughout her life.Can you find any relevance to Pan’s finally being comforted by what the mother of the toddler says to her?
5.In what way does Mark Carson differ from Pan in his understanding of culture and ethnicity?
6.What does the story tell us about the problems faced by mixed-blood Chinese American women?
7.What is the theme of the story?
Pat and Pan
1.What do you think of the image of Pat and Pan in the first paragraph?
2.Pat is depicted as being unable to speak the language of his ancestors? What is his mother tongue? Is language related to race, culture or biology?
3.Think about this sentence from the story, “Pan’s memory was good,and so were lichis and shredded cocoanut candy.” What role does food play for Miss Harrison as a missionary?
4.Different from “Its Wavering Image,” which is placed in the short fiction section when Mrs.Spring Fragrance was published, “Pat and Pan”is one of the tales included in “Tales of Chinese Children” in the same book.Why is the former fiction whereas the latter a tale? In what ways is Pat Chinese? Compare the two stories and comment on the role of culture in which one is raised.
5.If “Pat and Pan” is a tale, how do you interpret the intrusion of Anna Harrison into the fairyland of Pat and Pan? Is the knowledge that she inculcates into Pat poisonous? Is her role similar to that of Satan in Eden?
Sui Sin Far, the Half Chinese Writer, Tells of Her Career
1.The title of this biographical essay makes it clear that the writer is half Chinese.Find out other places in the essay that deal with her half Chinese descent and comment on the act of revealing her Eurasian identity.Was it advantageous or disadvantageous to reveal her Asian blood at the time the essay was published?
2.Several times in the essay the writer mentions her contacts with people of Chinese origin.What is her purpose of doing so?
3.The writer says in the essay, “From that time I began to go among my mother’s people, and it did me a world of good to discover how akin I was to them.” What is the world of good? In what way did these people influence her career? Does she do Chinese Americans a world of good?
4.Edith Eaton was of the fourteen children of an English father and a Chinese mother.Some of her siblings chose to pass for white, some like Edith Eaton decided to side with their mother’s people, whereas one of them, Winnifred Eaton, concocted a Japanese identity and wrote numerous Japanese American novels and stories.Why did Edith decide to write about the Chinese? What comment is implied in the sentence “Some Eurasians may affect that no slur is cast upon them because of their nationality; but I dislike cant and desire to be sincere”?
5.How do her acquaintances comment on her writings? What does the writer say of her own writing?
6.How does the writer look upon female bonding, particularly between women of different nationalities? Is her opinion influenced by her Eurasian identity?
7.It was difficult for a woman and even more difficult for a Eurasian woman to make a living by writing at the turn of the twentieth century.What is the writer like as a daughter and sister? What hardships does she go through?