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Narrated by P.J. Ochlan
Yunte HuangUnabridged — 14 hours, 25 minutes
Narrated by P.J. Ochlan
Yunte HuangUnabridged — 14 hours, 25 minutes
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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 (1811¿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.
The work of describing [Chang and Eng's] lives, which could so easily slip into its own form of exploitation, would be a challenge for any biographer. In the hands of Yunte Huang, however, Chang and Eng's story becomes more than a biography. Inseparable is a thoughtful, scholarly, wide-ranging meditation on what it means to be human.
…[a] contemplative yet engrossing volume.
02/05/2018
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.)
"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."
"Moving, wise, and wide-ranging, Inseparable is the poignant story of what it means to live in a diverse culture that strains after uniformity. As in Charlie Chan, Yunte Huang has once again found a perfect subject — perfectly commensurate with his sympathy for American history and the American compulsion to stereotype that which it fails to understand. And so elegantly written, it's impossible to put down."
"Many of the subjects are timely today, such as the racial injustices the twins faced as Asian immigrants, often doubly worse for them due to their conjoined state.... Inseparable is an engaging look at the lives of two singular people."
"Engrossing.... give[s] an unvarnished look at the degradation and disparagement the brothers had to endure."
"Excellent.... a complex literary history that mirrors the global story of meetings between east and west. Huang knows the treacherous racial terrain behind the meetings of facts and fictions in American culture [and] the place of “race” in every rendezvous with American history. Learned and playful, Inseparable draws on Huang’s personal experiences and his astonishing literary and historical knowledge."
"Inseparable, Yunte Huang’s exuberant and vivid account of the 'original Siamese twins,' examines 19th century American attitudes toward race and sex that resonate today — a time when immigrants, people of color, those with disabilities and others are denied their stories and denied their humanity.... By sharing his own experiences, [Yuang] reveals the poignant commonalities of immigrants across time and place, strangers making sense of a strange land, determined to make a better life for themselves and their children."
"Inseparable tells an astonishing story, by turns ghastly, hilarious, unnerving, and moving. Huang is a dazzling writer, bold, energetic, and intellectually alert. His gripping account of the lives of the celebrated Siamese twins Cheng and Eng not only richly illuminates the past of P.T. Barnum and Mark Twain but also probes the racial and sexual politics of the present."
"After years of showcased servitude, the original 'Siamese twins' Chang and Eng Bunker settled down in small-town North Carolina and adopted the lives of 19th-century Southern gentry — identifying with the white oppressor class, in other words, fathering at least 21 children between them, owning slaves and sending their sons to fight for the Confederacy. Huang is attuned to the ironies of their story in his incisive and riveting account."
"Excellent.... Mr. Huang compellingly makes his case that racism was a factor in these two self-made gentlemen land owners still being considered, late in life, as nothing more than a Barnumesque “freak show”.... It’s not difficult to find in this, as Mr. Huang most definitely does, a comment on the times in which we live."
"Chang and Eng waltzed, arm and arm, indivisible, across a brutally divided America. Huang's spellbinding account tells their story with a complexity, and sensitivity, with which it has never been told before."
Excellent.... a complex literary history that mirrors the global story of meetings between east and west. Huang knows the treacherous racial terrain behind the meetings of facts and fictions in American culture [and] the place of “race” in every rendezvous with American history. Learned and playful, Inseparable draws on Huang’s personal experiences and his astonishing literary and historical knowledge.
Inseparable, Yunte Huang’s exuberant and vivid account of the 'original Siamese twins,' examines 19th century American attitudes toward race and sex that resonate today — a time when immigrants, people of color, those with disabilities and others are denied their stories and denied their humanity.... By sharing his own experiences, [Yuang] reveals the poignant commonalities of immigrants across time and place, strangers making sense of a strange land, determined to make a better life for themselves and their children.
Excellent.... Mr. Huang compellingly makes his case that racism was a factor in these two self-made gentlemen land owners still being considered, late in life, as nothing more than a Barnumesque “freak show”.... It’s not difficult to find in this, as Mr. Huang most definitely does, a comment on the times in which we live.
2018-01-08
The fascinating story of conjoined twins Chang and Eng Bunker (1811-1874), who became wealthy celebrities in Jacksonian America.When Chang and Eng were 17, they left their native Siam under contract to showmen who planned to exhibit them throughout the world. Their impoverished mother was given $500 and the promise that her boys would return in five years; she never saw them again. Instead of returning home, they rose to fame and fortune in America. Huang (English/Univ. of California, Santa Barbara; Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History, 2011, etc.) sets the brothers' improbable story in the context of American culture, attitudes about race and sex, and political turmoil during more than four decades of roiling change. In the author's shrewd, entertaining narrative, the twins emerge as astute businessmen who, at the age of 21, unequivocally declared their independence from exploitative managers who worked them "like a pair of mules yoked to a grindstone." Willful and determined, self-educated and articulate, they managed their careers so well that after a decade they were able to retire to a town in rural North Carolina, which later gained fame as Andy Griffith's Mayberry. The twins became naturalized citizens and owned farmland as well as slaves. They married two sisters, creating a unique "conjugal structure" that incited "insidious speculations of tabloid peddlers and curious neighbors" who were shocked at the marriage of white women to Asian men. Between them, they fathered 21 children. By the 1850s, the large brood created such tension in the families' one house that the twins set up two households, alternating three days in each conjugal bed. Staunch Confederates during the Civil War, they saw their wealth plummet after the South lost, forcing them on the road once again. This time, though, they struggled to find an audience, eventually performing in a German circus; now elderly, they were deemed "pathetic," "freakish and tasteless."A vivid portrayal of the trials and triumphs of two determined men.
| BN ID: | 2940171418694 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HighBridge Company |
| Publication date: | 07/03/2018 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
