https://booknormblog.com/2018/04/08/book-review-inseparable-the-original-siamese-twins-and-their-rendezvous-with-american-history-by-yunte-huang/

BOOKWORM NORM
book reviews, opinions and fun by Norm Sigurdson
POSTED ONAPRIL 8, 2018 BY NORM SIGURDSON

Book Review – Inseparable: The Original Siamese Twins and Their Rendezvous with American History by Yunte Huang

Yunte Huang is an English professor at UC Santa Barbara and the author of a wonderfully eye-opening book, Charlie Chan: the Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History, which traced the Charlie Chan story from the real-life Honalulu police investigator, Chang Apana, who inspired Earl Derr Biggers’s fictional detective, through to Charlie Chan’s impact on American culture and ideas about the racialized “other.”

In his new (similarly titled) book Huang explores the remarkable story of Chang and Eng Bunker, the original “Siamese Twins” in the 19th century. In Inseparable: The Original Siamese Twins and Their Rendezvous with American History, Huang tells the story of the conjoined twins improbable rise from a tiny fishing village in what is now Thailand to their years of touring as “freaks of nature” to their comfortable lives as slave-owning southern landowners in ante-bellum America (fathering 21 children between them) to their unhappy lives after the South’s defeat in the American Civil War.

He also does an excellent job job of placing the twins’ lives in the context of America’s civic life in the free-for-all years of the Age of Andrew Jackson and in Victorian era America’s strange vortex of race, class and sexuality.
The twins, who were joined at the sternum by a four inch piece of cartilage, were born to an ethnically Chinese family of fishermen and traders in 1811, in what was then the Kingdom of Siam. Locally they were known as the “Chinese Twins.”

A Scottish trader, Robert Hunter, happened to see the 17 year-old twins swimming in tandem in the local river one day and paid their mother $500 to allow him to exhibit the boys on a world-wide tour, promising to return them in five years time. She never saw them again.

Hunter, who claimed to have “discovered” the twins became their de facto owner along with his partner, an American adventurer named Captain Abel Coffin. Chang and Eng were set to a gruelling pace of shows and exhibitions in the United States, Canada and Britain.

As they matured they began to resent the second-class treatment they received from the men who considered them to be their property and chaffed at their “owners” pocketing all of the profits.

When they reached the age of 21 they rebelled. They declared their independence and hired a manager and controlled their own appearances. They kept this up for seven years.

The twins were naturally thrifty and saved up $10,000 in earnings, a good sum in the early 1800s. They moved to rural North Carolina, built a large house, opened a dry goods store and began farming, first hogs and corn and later tobacco.

Huang does an excellent job of using contemporary sources and the brothers’ own meticulous bookkeeping records to follow their story. He also has many historical digressions that place Chang and Eng’s unusual lives in the context of current events and sociological trends.

In the South that Chang and Eng (or Chang-Eng as people often called them as if they were one single entity) settled, the racial divide was strictly between blacks and whites. Chinese hadn’t yet become a substantial immigrant group in the years before the Gold Rush and the building of the railroads.

As men of wealth and fame the brothers came to be regarded in many ways as “honorary whites.” They obtained American citizenship and were listed as “white” on most documents. Surprisingly, for men who had rebelled against being considered chattel themselves, they became slave owners and slave traders as well, owning 32 slaves at one point.

They were also avidly pro-Confederacy, sending one son each to fight on the rebel side in the Civil War. Eng even named one of his sons after the Confederate general Robert E. Lee. Huang makes much of the irony of the former chattel slaves, freakish and foreign, identifying so readily with the white ruling class.

In 1843 they married two sisters, Adelaide and Sarah Yates, to the consternation and prurient wonderment of their neighbours and the nation’s penny press. Huang spends a chapter on the question of the physical and emotional gymnastics their sex lives must have necessitated, but in the end he can only speculate.

After the defeat of the Confederacy, Chang and Eng fell on hard times. Their slaves were now free and their savings were worthless. They went on the road again, but now as middle-aged men they were no longer the charismatic curiosities of earlier day. As Huang says, they appeared to be sad and pathetic.

Chang suffered a stroke in 1870 and became despondent and alcoholic. He died in 1874 and Eng spent his last hours still attached to his dead brother, terrified and inconsolable, before he too died.

Huang tells the improbable story of the twins with empathy and insight. He never lets us lose track of the fact that Chang and Eng were real people with real emotions, wants and needs and with their own share of flaws as well.

Inseparable: The Original Siamese Twins and Their Rendezvous with American History by Yunte Huang, Liveright, 416pp.

Meticulously researched biography about the world’s most famous conjoined twins.

Chang and Eng were joined by a small tube of skin and shared a liver. Today they would have been separated soon after birth. In the early 1800s, they were purchased from their Chinese/Siamese mother for $500. They were shipped to America in steerage while their owners cruised first-class. The twins were shown around America and briefly England as both racially curiosities and freaks while living as basically property of their owners. Eventually, taking control of their life, they marry American sisters and have 21 children. They also purchase some slaves of their own.

Inseparable: The Original Siamese Twins and Their Rendezvous with American History does a great job of setting the scene in early America. It relates politics, demographics and culture of each year as the twins travel around the US. The twins’ story is inspiring. Going from slaves to slave owners while being obviously different from all around them is a testament to their intelligence and work ethic if not their morality. Times were different back then and the author tries to place their decisions within the culture of the times.

I enjoyed Inseparable hugely. It reads like fiction despite being fully developed from contemporaneous sources. This book contains so much history, it would also be a good resource for authors writing historical fiction in the same time period. 5 stars!

Thanks to the publisher, Liveright, and NetGalley for an advanced copy.

Inseparable is a biography about the original Siamese Twins, Chang and Eng Bunker. The story reminds me of the Elephant Man but Huang has lovingly researched his subject matter with an incredible thorough hand.

The Bunker twins lived from 1811 to 1874. The story follows from their birth to their eventual death and their tour throughout America during this time. Lovingly told through emotional highs and lows, this is an incredible story that garners one to delve into their lives. Heartbreak, horror, comedy, darkness and light, all aspects of life are on show and it is a testament to this incredible pair.

The book is very readable and I was so involved with finding out about the Bunker twins that I could not get enough. I was in awe of this incredible biography. Imagine life in the 1800’s, before acceptance and political correctness and being born with a genetic defect that stands out from the crowd. Huang is able to look at their lives and how they had made their mark on life.

This is a phenomenal book and one that I urge many to read. Huang is top of his game when chronicling the lives of these two men. If you are looking for a biography that goes beyond just pointed facts, I urge to you to give this try just for the depth of the emotion alone sets this apart from so many biographies. This is a true winner.