Here, now, in the year 2021, the word "freak" is just one of many, many troublesome words that have been declared politically incorrect. However, there was a time in the 19th century when the word had a neutral connotation, usually referring to a person who is physically deformed or has some extraordinary medical condition or body modification. For some, the word even became a positive identifier for those people who exhibited their differences and unique traits to crowds of the curious who paid to see them. There were some freaks who saw their differences as an avenue to a life they could not have dreamed of otherwise, a life of traveling the world, becoming celebrities, and earning a living. Unfortunately, there were also many acts of abuse, neglect, and cruelty committed against freaks, many of whom were mentally impaired. Historians and authors have found lots of engrossing stories within freak shows that hit on every aspect of human nature.
Truevine is the story of two black brothers, George and Willie Muse, born to a sharecropping family in Truevine Virginia, a black settlement near Roanoke. At the ages of nine and six in 1899, they were lured out of the tobacco field by a white man offering candy. Why? The brothers were albinos, and the man was a "talent" scout for sideshows, one of the men who made a living by traveling the country and finding freaks. The boys' mother was devastated, and she spent 28 years looking for them. While she searched, the boys were told their mother was dead, and they were groomed to become one of the most well known sideshow acts of the early 20th century. Like many black sideshow performers, they were displayed as wild savages, plucked from the deepest, darkest jungles of some exotic locale. Named Eko and Iko, they were even billed as Martian ambassadors. Truevine tells their story, and the story of the efforts to find them and return them to their family. The author, Beth Macy, also does a great job of describing both worlds that George and Willie were a part of, Jim Crow America and the sideshow world.
The second book I'm recommending is not really a book; it's a podcast and an Audible original, Stephen Fry's Victorian Secrets. I love Stephen Fry; he's one of my favorite celebrities. I enjoy his books, his movie and tv appearances, and his narration. Victorian Secrets is a great listen. Most of us have a very stereotypical view of the Victorian Age, that it was drab, dour, stuffy, reserved, and impossibly formal. Each chapter or episode goes beyond the stiff façade and reveals some very un-stereotypical stories. There are chapters on sexual fetishes, pornography, homosexuality, royal secrets, crime, etc., but there is also an interesting episode about sideshows and some of the more famous performers in Victorian England. Secrets is definitely not for children, but adults will find it very interesting and entertaining.
Bright and Distant Shores is a novel by Dominic Smith, an Australian-born writer of historic fiction. So far, he's written five books, and they all look interesting. Bright and Distant Shores is set in Chicago during the Gilded Age, late 1800s, early 1900s. The Chicago World's Fair is happening, skyscrapers are going up and changing the cityscape, and wealthy men are competing for the top spot on the social, economic, and philanthropic ladders. One of these tycoons (a fictional insurance giant) wants to own the tallest skyscraper in the city, and, in the process, he wants to one-up his neighbor, Marshall Field, department store magnate who founded the famous Field Museum of Natural History. To top Field, he commissions Owen Graves, a young collector, to make a voyage to the South Seas in order to collect Melanesian and Oceanic artifacts to put on display. He also wants Graves to bring back living Melanesians in order to create a village on the roof of his skyscraper as a publicity stunt to draw crowds, creating in effect a human zoo. Human zoos were the rage in the late 1800s and early 1900s. World Fairs brought small groups of people from exotic locations around the world, and visitors saw representations of different cultures that they wouldn't be able to see otherwise. The exhibits soon became big draws in zoos, parks, and traveling shows in America and Europe. Justified as "science", the human zoo exhibits were generally sad and dismal places, and many of the exhibited people had terrible lives, succumbing to depression, disease, and death, hundreds or thousands of miles away from their homes and families. Shores is a great adventure story, following Owen on his voyage and telling the story of the Melanesian brother and sister that he brings back to Chicago.
If you are interested in human zoos, here are a couple of other books published relatively recently about two famous individuals who were exhibited. The idea of human zoos obviously doesn't sit well with us in the 21st century, and the stories can be quite sad, but history can't always be happy.
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