Inseparable

November 15, 2017

Following the Edgar Award-winning Charlie Chan, Huang adds a distinctively Asian perspective to the story of Chang and Eng Bunker, conjoined twins brought from Siam to America in 1824, who started out as sideshow freaks but became smart businessmen, happily married to two white sisters. With a seven-city tour.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2018
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.

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February 5, 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.

March 1, 2018

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 Journal, LLC Used with permission.