Chang and Eng reconnected
Subtitle: the original Siamese twins in American literature and culture
By: Cynthia Wu
Publisher: Temple University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Philadelphia
Language: eng
Number of pages: 203
ISBN-13: 9781439908686; 9781439908709
Subjects: Asian Americans in literature; Conjoined twins in literature; Literature and society; Popular culture; History and criticism; American literature; HISTORY / United States / 19th Century; SOCIAL SCIENCE / People with Disabilities; In literature; LITERARY CRITICISM / American / Asian American
Description: "Conjoined twins Chang and Eng Bunker have fascinated the world since the nineteenth century. In her captivating book, Chang and Eng Reconnected, Cynthia Wu traces the 'original Siamese twins' through the terrain of American culture, showing how their inseparability underscored tensions between individuality and collectivity in the American popular imagination. Using letters, medical documents and exhibits, literature, art, film, and family lore, Wu provides a trans-historical analysis that presents the Bunkers as both a material presence and as metaphor. She also shows how the twins figure in representations of race, disability, and science in fictional narratives about nation building. As astute entrepreneurs, the twins managed their own lives; nonetheless, as Chang and Eng Reconnected shows, American culture has always viewed them through the multiple lenses of difference."--Publisher's Web site.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Pt. 1. Material traces in the archive; title: Labor and ownership in the American South; title: Solving the mystery of their union; title: Strange Incursions into medical science at the Mutter Museum; title: Pt. 2. Reading literature and visual cultures; title: Late-nineteenth-century visions of conflict and consensus; title: Asian Americans bare/bear the hyphen; title: Disciplining and normalizing the woman subject in contemporary literature and film Pt. 3. Observing and participating; title: Our esteemed ancestors.