A biography of cinematic hero Charlie Chan, based on the real-life Chinese immigrant detective, Chang Apana, whose bravado inspired mystery writer Earl Derr Biggers to depict his fictional sleuth as a wisecracking and wise investigator rather than a stereotype.

Winner of the 2011 Edgar Award for Best Critical/Biographical Book Shortlisted for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in Biography Named One of Esquire's 50 Best Biographies of All Time "An ingenious and absorbing book…It will permanently change the way we tell this troubled yet gripping story." —Jonathan Spence Hailed as “irrepressibly spirited and entertaining” (Pico Iyer, Time) and “a fascinating cultural survey” (Paul Devlin, Daily Beast), this provocative first biography of Charlie Chan presents American history in a way that it has never been told before. Yunte Huang ingeniously traces Charlie Chan from his real beginnings as a bullwhip-wielding detective in territorial Hawaii to his reinvention as a literary sleuth and Hollywood film icon. Huang finally resurrects the “honorable detective” from the graveyard of detested postmodern symbols and reclaims him as the embodiment of America’s rich cultural diversity. The result is one of the most critically acclaimed books of the year and a “deeply personal . . . voyage into racial stereotyping and the humanizing force of story telling” (Donna Seaman, Los Angeles Times).

A biography of cinematic hero Charlie Chan, based on the real-life Chinese immigrant detective, Chang Apana, whose bravado inspired mystery writer Earl Derr Biggers to depict his fictional sleuth as a wisecracking and wise investigator rather than a stereotype.

A biography of cinematic hero Charlie Chan, based on the real-life Chinese immigrant detective, Chang Apana, whose bravado inspired mystery writer Earl Derr Biggers to depict his fictional sleuth as a wisecracking and wise investigator rather than a stereotype.

A selection of 600 quotes from the Charlie Chan movies, based on the character created by Earl Derr Biggers. Includes a 12-page databank of publicity photos, lobby cards, and other scenes from the movies.

Published in 1925, The House Without a Key introduces the kindly detective Charlie Chan, conceived by Earl Derr Biggers as a counter to the “Yellow Peril” stereotypes common in the era’s society. John Quincy Winterslip, having been sent by his family to convince his aunt to return to Boston, arrives in Honolulu to find that a rich family member with a shady past has been murdered. Detective Charlie Chan of the Honolulu Police Department recruits John to aid in the investigation. As he works to uncover the murderer, John learns about Chinese culture—and true love. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

Nearly a decade after his triumphant Charlie Chan biography, Yunte Huang returns with this long-awaited portrait of Chang and Eng Bunker (1811–1874), twins conjoined at the sternum by a band of cartilage and a fused liver, who were “discovered” in Siam by a British merchant in 1824. Bringing an Asian American perspective to this almost implausible story, Huang depicts the twins, arriving in Boston in 1829, first as museum exhibits but later as financially savvy showmen who gained their freedom and traveled the backroads of rural America to bring “entertainment” to the Jacksonian mobs. Their rise from subhuman, freak-show celebrities to rich southern gentry; their marriage to two white sisters, resulting in twenty-one children; and their owning of slaves, is here not just another sensational biography but a Hawthorne-like excavation of America’s historical penchant for finding feast in the abnormal, for tyrannizing the “other”—a tradition that, as Huang reveals, becomes inseparable from American history itself.