Must children born with socially challenging anatomies have their bodies changed because others cannot be expected to change their minds? "One of Us views conjoined twinning and other "abnormalities" from the point of view of people living with such anatomies, and considers these issues within the larger historical context of anatomical politics. Anatomy matters, Alice Domurat Dreger tells us, because the senses we possess, the muscles we control, and the resources we require to keep our bodies alive limit and guide what we experience in any given context. Her deeply thought-provoking and compassionate work exposes the breadth and depth of that context--the extent of the social frame upon which we construct the "normal." In doing so, the book calls into question assumptions about anatomy and normality, and transforms our understanding of how we are all intricately and inextricably joined.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. The Limits of Individuality
2. Split Decisions
3. What Sacrifice
4. Freeing the Irish Giant
5. The Future of Anatomy Notes Acknowledgments Credits Index Illustrations
1. Eng and Chang Bunker as young men
2. The Bunker twins with two of their sons
3. Types of conjoinment
4. Laloo and his parasitic twin
5. Abigail and Brittany Hensel at play in the family home
6. Chang and Eng Bunker engaged in various pursuits
7. Lin and Win Htut before separation
8. Cover of AORN Journal, January 1982
9. The Two-Headed Boy of Bengal
10. Charles Byrne with two other giants and several people with dwarfism
11. Advertising pamphlet for Millie and Christina McCoy
12. Crouching Figure with Visible Skeleton, by Laura Ferguson
