Inseparable : the original Siamese twins and their rendezvous with American history / Yunte Huang.

Title:

Author:

Huang, Yunte,

ISBN:

9780871404473

0871404478

Edition:

First edition.

Publication Info:

New York :

Description:

388 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Personal Subject:

Bunker, Chang, 1811-1874.

Bunker, Eng, 1811-1874.

Subject(s):

Conjoined twins -- United States -- History -- 19th century.

Conjoined twins -- United States -- Biography.

Holds: Copies (not including on-order items):

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Call Number	Shelf Location	Status	Item Holds
Searching... East Library	Book	616 HUAN	Biography	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

Nearly a decade after his triumphant Charlie Chan biography,Yunte Huang returns with this long-awaitedportrait of Chang and Eng Bunker (1811-1874), twinsconjoined at the sternum by a band of cartilage and a fusedliver, who were "discovered" in Siam by a British merchant in1824. Bringing an Asian American perspective to this almostimplausible story, Huang depicts the twins, arriving in Bostonin 1829, first as museum exhibits but later as financially savvyshowmen who gained their freedom and traveled the backroadsof rural America to bring "entertainment" to the Jacksonianmobs. Their rise from subhuman, freak-show celebrities to richsouthern gentry; their marriage to two white sisters, resulting intwenty-one children; and their owning of slaves, is here not justanother sensational biography but a Hawthorne-like excavationof America's historical penchant for finding feast in the abnormal,for tyrannizing the "other"--a tradition that, as Huangreveals, becomes inseparable from American history itself.

Author Notes

Yunte Huang , a Guggenheim Fellow, has taught at Harvard and the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is a Distinguished Professor of English. The author of the Edgar Award-winning biography Charlie Chan and Inseparable, both NBCC finalists, Huang speaks frequently about American popular culture.

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Guggenheim Fellow Huang (Charlie Chan) offers a fresh perspective on the lives of the famous conjoined twins, Chang and Eng Bunker, that focuses on two 19th-century trends: Americans' celebration of white individualism and their desire for entertainment, especially at freak shows. Born in Siam (now Thailand) in 1811, Chang and Eng arrived in the U.S. in 1829, under contract with a Scottish merchant named Robert Hunter for exhibition as curiosities. The appearances of the two young men in major U.S. cities sparked numerous public discussions about religion, the soul, and individuality. The liveliest parts of the book capture the exhibitions, which continued for a decade. More sobering is Huang's recounting of how race affected the twins' lives. Shocked to learn that, because they were Asian, most Americans considered them enslaved workers, Chang and Eng insisted on an improved business contract in 1832. Testing the boundaries of racial conventions, they married two white sisters in North Carolina in 1843, purchased slaves, and supported the Confederacy. The lives of Chang and Eng brilliantly shine here. Illus. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

Their names were Chang and Eng. They were conjoined twins from Thailand, which in the early nineteenth century was known as the Kingdom of Siam hence the term Siamese twins. They were two complete men joined by cartilage at the sternum and by a fused liver. They were born in 1811, died in 1874, and, for a time, were as famous as any internet celebrity today. In this new biography, Huang (author of the Edgar Award-winning Charlie Chan, 2010) tells two stories: of Chang and Eng, the ordinary men who married, fathered children, and struggled to make a living; and of the international celebrities who toured the world, putting themselves on display as human oddities. It's a story, too, of a bygone era, a pre-radio, pre-television, pre-internet age when it was considered legitimate entertainment to gawk at people who were different. Huang offers a vivid portrait of two men who did the best they could to live ordinary lives, and a revealing look at a somewhat scandalous side of the prim-and-proper Victorian Era.--Pitt, David Copyright 2018 Booklist

Library Journal Review

Chang and Eng Bunker became part of American culture in 1824 when they were brought over from Siam, now Thailand, to become sideshow spectacles. While the conjoined brothers have been the subject of numerous books, including Darrin Strauss's fictional take on their life, Chang and Eng, Huang (English, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara; Charlie Chan) reexamines the twins' lives in both a historical and cultural context. The author looks past their celebrity to explore how two immigrants were able to free themselves from their manager to become slave-owning plantation proprietors in North Carolina in the years before the Civil War. The narrative follows the Bunkers on their trip across Jacksonian America, viewing events and issues that helped shape the country. While the focus often shifts to these larger cultural events, Huang has placed the rise of the sideshow and "otherness" as a central aspect of the American identity. VERDICT Huang's elegantly written biography uses the life story of Chang and Eng Bunker as a critique of a young America. Highly recommended to readers of cultural history.-John Rodzvilla, Emerson Coll., Boston © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

List of Illustrations	p. ix
Preface	p. xi
Prologue: A Game on the High Seas	p. xv
Part 1 In Siam
1 Siam	p. 3
2 The Chinese Twins	p. 6
3 Cholera	p. 15
4 The King and Us	p. 20
5 Departure	p. 26
Part 2 First Years
6 A Curiosity in Boston	p. 39
7 The Monster, or Not	p. 51
8 Gotham City	p. 57
9 The City of Brotherly Love	p. 66
10 Knocking at the Gate	p. 70
11 Racial Freaks	p. 80
12 Sentimental Education	p. 89
Part 3 America on the Road
13 The Great Eclipse	p. 97
14 A Satirical Tale	p. 102
15 The Lynnfield Battle	p. 108
16 An Intimate Rebellion	p. 117
17 Old Dominion	p. 125
18 Emancipation	p. 131
19 A Parable	p. 138
20 America on the Road	p. 146
21 The Deep South	p. 163
22 Head Bumps	p. 170
Part 4 Look Homeward, Angel
23 Wilkesboro	p. 187
24 Traphill	p. 197
25 A Universal Truth	p. 206
26 Foursome	p. 225
27 Mount Airy, or Monticello	p. 235
28 The Age of Humbugs	p. 252
29 Minstrel Freaks	p. 268
Part 5 The Civil War and Beyond
30 Seeing the Elephant	p. 283
31 Reconstruction	p. 297
32 The Last Radiance of the Setting Sun	p. 306
33 Afterlife	p. 317
Epilogue: Mayberry, USA	p. 327
Acknowledgments	p. 349
Notes	p. 351
Selected Bibliography	p. 373
Index	p. 381

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