{"product_id":"9781631495458","title":"Inseparable: The Original Siamese Twins and Their Rendezvous with American History","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e“An astonishing story, by turns ghastly, hilarious, unnerving, and moving.”—Stephen Greenblatt, author of \u003cem\u003eThe Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e  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” (\u003cem\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c\/em\u003e). “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” (\u003cem\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/em\u003e), Hawthorne-like excavation of America’s historical penchant for tyrannizing the other—a tradition that, as Huang reveals, becomes inseparable from American history itself.","brand":"Liveright Publishing Corporation","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47050454958320,"sku":"9781631495458","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781631495458_p0.jpg?v=1763672223","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781631495458","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}