Inseparable: The Original Siamese Twins and Their Rendezvous with American History“An astonishing story, by turns ghastly, hilarious, unnerving, and moving.”—Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve In this “excellent” portrait of America’s famed nineteenth-century Siamese twins, celebrated biographer Yunte Huang discovers in the conjoined lives of Chang and Eng Bunker (1811–1874) a trenchant “comment on the times in which we live” (Wall Street Journal). “Uncovering ironies, paradoxes and examples of how Chang and Eng subverted what Leslie Fiedler called ‘the tyranny of the normal’ ” (BBC), Huang depicts the twins’ implausible route to assimilation after their “discovery” in Siam by a British merchant in 1824 and arrival in Boston as sideshow curiosities in 1829. Their climb from subhuman, freak-show celebrities to rich, southern gentry who profited from entertaining the Jacksonian mobs; their marriage to two white sisters, resulting in twenty-one children; and their owning of slaves, is here not just another sensational biography but an “extraordinary” (New York Times), Hawthorne-like excavation of America’s historical penchant for tyrannizing the other—a tradition that, as Huang reveals, becomes inseparable from American history itself. |
Contents
Emancipation | |
A Parable | |
America on the Road | |
The Deep South | |
Head Bumps | |
PART FOUR LOOK HOMEWARD ANGEL | |
Wilkesboro 24 Traphill | |
A Universal Truth | |
PART TWO FIRST YEARS | |
A Curiosity in Boston | |
The Monster or | |
Gotham City | |
The City of Brotherly Love | |
Knocking at the Gate | |
Racial Freaks | |
Sentimental Education | |
PART THREE AMERICA ON THE ROAD | |
The Great Eclipse | |
A Satirical Tale | |
The Lynnfield Battle | |
An Intimate Rebellion | |
Old Dominion | |
Foursome | |
Mount Airy or Monticello | |
The Age of Humbugs | |
Minstrel Freaks | |
PART FIVE THE CIVIL WAR AND BEYOND | |
Seeing the Elephant | |
Reconstruction | |
The Last Radiance of the Setting | |
Afterlife | |
Mayberry | |
Acknowledgments | |
Notes | |
Common terms and phrases
Abel Coffin Adelaide American Andy arrived Asian Bangkok became Black Hawk bodies Boston boys British brother called Captain Coffin century Chang and Eng Charles Harris Chinese Confederate conjoined twins curiosity doctors Eng Bunker Eng’s English exhibition exotic fact famous Fowler freak show Graves human Hunter Ibid Indian James Hale John July king land later letter living London Mark Twain marriage marry Mayberry Meklong Melville minstrel minstrelsy Moby-Dick monster Mount Airy mountain museum NCSA negro newspaper night nineteenth-century North Carolina Orser P. T. Barnum peddlers Philadelphia phrenological popular racial Rama III reported road Robert Robert Hunter Roye Siam Siamese Twins slaves soon South Southern story Susan Coffin Tocqueville tour town Traphill turned Turner Twain Union University Press Virginia Wallace and Wallace Warren Wilkes County Wilkesboro William women words wrote Yankee Yates York young