Inseparable: The Original Siamese Twins and Their Rendezvous With American History - Rilegato

Huang, Yunte

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0871404478 ISBN 13: 9780871404473

Casa editrice: Liveright Pub Corp, 2018

Riassunto

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.

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Recensione:

"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." --Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve

"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

"Huang uncovers ironies, paradoxes and examples of how Chang and Eng subverted what Leslie Fiedler called "the tyranny of the normal"."

--BBC Culture

"It is a fascinating story..."

--Literary Review

"Yunte Huang is well placed to retell this extraordinary story of transnational celebrity & assimilation...his Asian American focus is fresh and welcome."

--Times Literary Supplement

L'autore:

Yunte Huang is a Guggenheim Fellow and a professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of Transpacific Imaginations and Charlie Chan, which won the 2011 Edgar Award and was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography. Having come of age in China as a student in the time of Tiananmen, Huang now lives in Santa Barbara, California.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Liveright Pub Corp
• Data di pubblicazione: 2018
• ISBN 10: 0871404478
• ISBN 13: 9780871404473
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 388