From Freak Show to Jim Crow: A Siamese Twin and His Deaf Daughter in the Antebellum and Postbellum South

Autor/in	Sayers, Edna Edith
Titel	From Freak Show to Jim Crow: A Siamese Twin and His Deaf Daughter in the Antebellum and Postbellum South
Quelle	In: Sign Language Studies, 22 (2022) 4, S.553-589 (37 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0302-1475
Schlagwörter	Deafness; Twins; Exhibits; Family Relationship; Congenital Impairments; Racial Segregation; Fathers; Immigrants; Cultural Influences; Race; Physical Disabilities; United States History; Decision Making; Daughters; Educational History; Asian Americans; North Carolina + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Gehörlosigkeit; Taubstummheit; Twin; Zwilling; Rassentrennung; Immigrant; Immigrantin; Immigranten; Cultural influence; Kultureinfluss; Rasse; Abstammung; Physical handicap; Körperbehinderung; Decision-making; Entscheidungsfindung; Daughter; Tochter; History of education; Bildungsgeschichte; Asian immigrant; United States; Asiatischer Einwanderer; USA
Abstract	Eng and Chang Bunker (1811--1874) were conjoined twins of Chinese ethnicity born in Siam (today, Thailand). Before the Civil War, they toured the United States to exhibit themselves as a "human curiosity," a wonder of nature, their conjoined state documented by local doctors at each stop on their tours, and their exhibition touted as edifying and educational. The American public was amazed, therefore, or, rather, aghast to learn in 1840 that these racialized "freaks of nature" had bought land in North Carolina's Piedmont, built a house, taken US citizenship and the last name Bunker, married two farmer's daughters, Sarah (Sally Ann) and Adelaide Yates, and were fathering with them what would become, respectively, eleven and ten children. Two of Chang and Adelaide's children, Louisa and Jesse, were born deaf in 1855 and 1861, respectively, and would attend school at the North Carolina Institution for the Deaf and Dumb and the Blind (NCIDDB) during its chaotic Reconstruction years of partial racial integration, where Louisa would marry a deaf teacher of semi-segregated "colored" deaf pupils. Meanwhile, the twins had returned to the freak show touring circuit, now as conjoined Southern gentlemen and fathers of growing families, exhibiting, along with their own anomalous bodies, sample well-dressed offspring who bore marked resemblances to themselves. Naturally, the two deaf children were never selected as co-exhibits, the point of exhibiting sample children, after all, being to show that the offspring of these "curiosities" were healthy, handsome, and acceptably "normal." The lives of Chang and his daughter Louisa thus provide a two-generation immigrant story of negotiating the culturally constructed intersections of race and physical anomaly both before and after the Civil War. Louisa's life was largely determined by the choices that her father made in his efforts to negotiate those intersections. (ERIC).
Anmerkungen	Gallaudet University Press. 800 Florida Avenue NE, Denison House, Washington, DC 20002-3695. Tel: 202-651-5488; Fax: 202-651-5489; Web site: http://gupress.gallaudet.edu/SLS.html
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2024/1/01