"Mrs. Spring Fragrance" is the title story in Sui Sin Far's first and only collection of short stories, Mrs. Spring Fragrance, published in 1912. The collection also contains twenty stories about children, collectively known as "Tales of Chinese Children." As a whole, the collection discusses issues of racism, assimilation, and the alienation of Chinese Americans in North America. The title story describes the matchmaking tendencies of a recent arrival to the United States, who eagerly assimilates American customs and language and meddles in the lives of her neighbors.
Through this character sketch of a young married Chinese woman, Far also subtly satirizes the patronizing attitude of the policies of the United States government and its citizens towards Asian immigrants. Mrs. Spring Fragrance's wry and insightful observations of the incidents in her neighborhood are heavily ironic.
The other stories in Mrs. Spring Fragrance also express the struggle of Chinese Americans to find identity in an oppressive society, particularly from a woman's point of view. Sui Sin Far, a pseudonym of Edith Maude Eaton, was born of a Chinese mother and a British father and moved to the United States at a young age, eventually becoming a journalist in the Pacific Northwest and in Canada. Keenly aware of her heritage, Far embraced her Chinese roots in an era when many were quick to become as American as possible. Writing under the pseudonym Sui Sin Far instantly identified her as an immigrant, and lent credence to her writings, which were often social commentaries on the state of immigrant life in the still-growing United States.
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