The Lives of Chang and Eng: Siam’s Twins in Nineteenth-Century America by Joseph Andrew Orser (review)

Conjoined at birth, Chang and Eng became nineteenth-century sensations as the “Siamese twins” who toured the United States and abroad before retiring to raise families in rural North Carolina (p. 1). The Lives of Chang and Eng: Siam’s Twins in Nineteenth-Century America is not a traditional biography, but rather a systematic and rigorous examination of the “lived experiences and discursive representations” of the twins, aimed at understanding nineteenth-century notions of race, deformity, gender, and sexuality (p. 206). Meticulously researched, Joseph Andrew Orser’s book provides new information on the twins as it details how the men profited from being “abnormal” yet nonetheless tried to fashion for themselves a measure of normality in American society.

Biographical details of the twins’ lives are scattered throughout the book. Chang and Eng were born in 1811 in a village sixty miles from Bangkok. Joined at the chest by a small band of cartilage, the boys were a curiosity in their own country before leaving for America when they were eighteen years old. Under the care of different managers, Chang and Eng prospered as they went from city to city, giving performances that featured their unique physiognomy and also highlighted their distinctive wit and innate intelligence. At the age of twenty-eight, Chang and Eng retired from touring and settled down in western North Carolina. The brothers bought land in Wilkes County, adopted the surname Bunker, courted and then wed local sisters Sarah Ann and Adelaide Yates, set up two households, managed two plantations, bought slaves, and began their lives as southern gentlemen. The Bunkers were among the wealthiest men in the county and enjoyed a comfortable life as patriarchs of two large families, between them fathering twenty-one children. They returned to touring whenever they needed funds, but generally the twins preferred to live an uneventful life in the country. When they died at the age of sixty-two, their wives had difficulty managing affairs, and it was up to the Bunker children to control the image of their famous fathers.

In The Lives of Chang and Eng, these biographical details are mainly devices used to explore multiple lines of analytical inquiry. The main approach is monster theory. As articulated by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, this theory posits that one method to determine the beliefs of a culture is to examine what that society saw as monstrous—an identity that was consistently applied to Chang and Eng—and to use those deviant characteristics to determine the cultural norms created as their opposition. Orser also borrows from Asian American studies, freak studies, and disability history. Theories aside, the author is at his best when showing how the twins were used symbolically. Notable is William Lloyd Garrison, who saw the twins’ marriage as evidence of the slave South’s depravity because “[n]one but a priest whose mind had become besotted by the impurities of slavery could ‘solemnize’ so bestial a union as this” (p. 97).

Trying to conceive of the twins and American culture through this multiplicity of theories is admirable but makes for difficult reading, leading to such ramblings as what it meant for Chang and Eng to be the sons of a Chinese man who lived in Siam and was married to a woman “who was Siamese, or Chinese, or part Chinese and part Siamese, or part Chinese and part Malay” (p. 15). The main issue, though, is the absence of Chang and Eng. Their voices are drowned out by contextual analysis, authorial asides, and discursive jaunts. And though The Lives of Chang and Eng is not a traditional biography, this reader still wanted to know more about these men and what they believed. Regardless, there is no question that Orser is an expert on his subject, and insights abound for those willing to take the time to make...