MONDAY, FEBRUARY 12 / 4PM
Stern Lounge (Austin 216)
“‘Gwine Back to Dixie’: Slave Girls and Underground Railways in the Life and work of Edith Eaton (Sui Sin Far)
FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Co-sponsored by the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute and the English Department
Mary Chapman is Professor of English at University of British Columbia. She is the author of MAKING NOISE, MAKING NEWS: SUFFRAGE PRINT CULTURE AND US MODERNISM (OUP 2014) and editor of BECOMING SUI SIN FAR: EARLY FICTION, JOURNALISM, AND TRAVEL WRITING (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2016).
This talk by Dr. Mary Chapman interprets Asian-North American author Sui Sin Far/Edith Eaton’s use of tropes we associate with African American literature and culture (I.e. slave girls and underground railroads) as drawing on her family autobiography. New research reveals that her Chinese mother was enslaved as a child and that her British father was “kingpin” in a smuggling network that enabled Chinese to move from Montreal across the US border during the Exclusion Era.
For more information, contact: Cathy Schlund-Vials at cathy.schlund-vials@uconn.edu