Chang and Eng Reconnected

The Original Siamese Twins in American Culture

Cynthia Wu

• Publisher: Temple University Press
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781439908693, 9781439908686
• eBook ISBN: 9781439908709
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Nordamerikanische Geschichte

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.

Table of contents

• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: Locating Material Traces in the Archives
• Part II : Reading Literature and Visual Cultures
• Part III : Observing and Participating
• Notes
• Index