Sui Sin Far
The narrator, Edith Maude Eaton (writing her under pen name), is the daughter of a British man and Chinese woman who recounts the discrimination, prejudice, bias and generalized negative stereotyping of Chinese by white society in England, Canada, America and the tropics. Her recollections of racism trace from when she was just four-years-old to her adult life working as stenographer and writer.
Charlie
The narrator’s slightly older brother. He is with her the very first time she see a Chinese person other than her mother and the divergence between the expression of Chinese culture and ethnicity is so striking that she is moved to ask Charlie if that is what they are really like. The seven-year-old’s thoughtful reply is immediately shattered by the intrusion of another young boy who confirms the answer with crudely racist insults.
The Mother
Although given to physically abusive punishment (a slap), the narrator’s mother openly and explicitly expresses a sense of pride whenever her children defend their Chinese heritage against the physical and verbal abuses of white children.
The Father
The narrator’s father is British and—at least from the perspective provided—a little complicated. She suspects he feigns a greater disinterest in her successful encounters with rude little children than he actually feels. In his effort to maintain a sense of peace over active engagement she declares her father to live by the wisdom of knowing when to turn a blind eye and dear ear to things. He is also critical of her relative to her "sturdier" sister.
The Midwesterner
In America, the narrator gets a job as a stenographer for a man living in the Midwest. Unaware of her Chinese ancestry and Eurasian status, at one point he and others make disturbingly racist comments about Chinese made all the more egregious because it is his devout Christianity which leads him to admit to their possession of a soul, but question their fundamental link to a shared sense of humanity. The narrator gathers the courage to confront him by admitting to her Chinese heritage and in perhaps the most poignant moment of the memoir receives a heartfelt apology of shame.
The Engaged Couple
Toward the end of the piece, the narrator relates the longest story in the entire narrative. It is about a half-Chinese woman who finally consents to marry a white man after rebuffing his proposal nine times, but only upon one condition outlined in her diary: “because the world is so cruel and sneering to a single woman.” The story continues with the eventual suggestion by the husband-to-be that perhaps life would be easier if she told people she was Japanese since so many of his friends and family would be charmed to meet a Japanese lady. The engagement ends with her recommendation that he should immediately set about to finding one.
