SOURCE: White-Parks, Annette. “Mrs. Spring Fragrance.” In Sui Sin Far/Edith Maude Eaton: A Literary Biography, pp. 195-236. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995.

In the following essay, White-Parks provides a deconstruction of the physical design, marketing strategy, and public reception of Far's short story volume Mrs. Spring Fragrance, juxtaposing these elements of the book's production with the content of the stories included in the volume.

So I do believe in the timelessness and universality of individual vision. It [my book] would not just be a family book or a woman's book, but a world book, and, at the same moment, my book. … I hope my writing has many layers, as human beings have layers.

—Maxine Hong Kingston, “Cultural Misreadings by American Reviewers”

Mrs. Spring Fragrance is Sui Sin Far's only book-length collection and—in the absence of the unlocated novel still in manuscript at the time of her...