Inseparable

The Original Siamese Twins and Their Rendezvous with American History

By: Yunte Huany

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Hardcover | 4 May 2018 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

Hardcover
416 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
2.42 x 1.64 x 0.34

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$53.75

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Nearly a decade after his triumphant Charlie Chan biography, Yunte Huang returns with this long-awaited portrait of Chang and Eng Bunker (1811â"1874), twins conjoined at the sternum by a band of cartilage and a fused liver, who were "discovered" in Siam by a British merchant in 1824. Bringing an Asian American perspective to this almost implausible story, Huang depicts the twins, arriving in Boston in 1829, first as museum exhibits but later as financially savvy showmen who gained their freedom and traveled the backroads of rural America to bring "entertainment" to the Jacksonian mobs. Their rise from subhuman, freak-show celebrities to rich southern gentry; their marriage to two white sisters, resulting in twenty-one children; and their owning of slaves, is here not just another sensational biography but a Hawthorne-like excavation of America's historical penchant for finding feast in the abnormal, for tyrannizing the "other"-a tradition that, as Huang reveals, becomes inseparable from American history itself.

Industry Reviews

"In the follow-up to his Edgar Award-winning Charlie Chan biography, Huang uncovers ironies, paradoxes and examples of how Chang and Eng subverted what Leslie Fiedler called 'the tyranny of the normal." -- Jane Ciabattari, BBC
"It is a fascinating story..." -- Literary Review
"Yunte Huang's book Inseparable tells [a] remarkable story." -- The Times
"After retiring in a small North Carolina town, they owned as many as 32 slaves and, between them, fathered at least 21 children. If that doesn't intrigue you-wait, how can that not intrigue you?" -- The 50 Best Books of 2018 - Newsweek
"Yunte Huang is well placed to retell this extraordinary story of transnational celebrity and assimilation. Huang grew up in China... his Asian American focus is fresh and welcome." -- Times Literary Supplement

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