"Helena de Bres aims to rescue twins from the gothic, from horror movies, and from singleton scrutiny . . . she stitches the project together with brio, a sense of stupefied luck at having a twin, and an insistence that anyone can reap similar benefits by acknowledging our interdependence, relaxing the need to believe in our singularity." - The New Yorker
"[de Bres] draws on her own experience as a way to explore mind-body boundaries and the nature of individualism and autonomy . . . As an identical twin, Ms. de Bres describes in fascinating detail the ways in which her twin’s thoughts and her own—and their physical experiences—seem to merge." - Wall Street Journal
"[de Bres] presents a philosophical inquiry into what twinship is to both the people who are twins and those of us looking in from the outside . . . [she] shows how recognizing the unique connections twins have to one another can help us to restructure and refocus our thoughts on the importance of individuality and our collective responsibilities to one another." — Autostraddle
“Stunning . . . In fluid prose, de Bres gracefully clarifies philosophical notions for the lay reader, and her own observations as an identical twin invigorate the book's emotional center while leaving room for the many unsolved mysteries of identity, kinship, and closeness. This will challenge the way readers see the world.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“A collection of engaging essays about binarization, identity, love, free will, objectification, and the depiction and understanding of twins in literature, art, philosophy, psychology, and popular culture . . . A thoughtful, well-rendered collection of musings on identity.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Lucid, curious, and deeply felt, How to Be Multiple is a work of philosophy, an autobiography of twindom, and a captivating exploration of selfhood. Most of us are not twins, but we all know duality, and de Bres uses her exceptional condition as a lens to examine what makes us distinct and what we all share. What a fun, gorgeous book.” —Melissa Febos, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of GIRLHOOD
“Helena de Bres has written a brilliant, surprising, and philosophically complex exploration of what it means to be a twin, but more than that-she's written a book that has transformed my understanding of what it means to be both one-of-a-kind and intimately connected to another human being. Profoundly illuminating, insightful, funny, and moving-How to Be Multiple is a must-read.” —Chloé Cooper Jones, author of EASY BEAUTY
“What is it like to be an identical twin? To know someone with such uncanny intimacy? To see another possible life with your genes played out? De Bres raises so many thrillingly mind-bending existential questions that she convinces you that twinship is a crucial key to understanding how we love and who we are.” —Larissa MacFarquhar, author of STRANGERS DROWNING: IMPOSSIBLE IDEALISM, DRASTIC CHOICES, AND THE URGE TO HELP
“This study of twinhood sits at the intersection of the intellectual and the personal-philosopher Helena de Bres is a twin herself, attuned to the uncanniness of being a twin as both a scholar and a sister.” —The Millions, Most Anticipated
"For the person who loves learning about human biology, there’s How to Be Multiple, a book about being a twin, the joys, the mythology, and the philosophy of it all. De Bres is a twin, and she explains that it’s not a matter of double the fun; instead, it’s about history, art, medicine, and yes, being one of a pair." - The Goshen News, “The Bookworm Sez”
2023-08-29
An exploration of selfhood and twinship.
Philosopher Helena de Bres, who describes herself as “an East Coast liberal arts college professor who grew up in a middle-class white New Zealand family with a union organizer dad and a hippie artsy mom,” is also queer, disabled, and an identical twin to the illustrator, Julia. Twinship is central to a collection of engaging essays about binarization, identity, love, free will, objectification, and the depiction and understanding of twins in literature, art, philosophy, psychology, and popular culture. Identical twins, writes the author, are fascinating for singletons, in part because they “enflame broader anxieties about the fragility of everyone’s capacity to stably identify anyone.” From the time they were infants, she and Julia, like many identical twins, were identified by binary differences that reliably told them apart. Rather than feeling pigeonholed by the characterization, the author felt a sense of power from knowing “where my talents and resources lay.” Nevertheless, as different as she feels from Julia’s personality, she acknowledges that a twin faces a particular challenge in defining a sense of separate personhood. “The cognitive, active, and emotional connections between Julia and me—and between many other close duos—are significant enough to make that separation, at best, incomplete,” she writes. Although Helena and Julia were born with a connective tissue disorder and both came out as gay in their 30s, the trajectory of their lives has diverged: Julia lives in New Zealand, raising a daughter; Helena became a U.S. citizen. Being a twin did not determine their lives, leading the author to ask, “what if a person isn’t only something you are, but something you do?” Philosophizing about twins, she suggests, “can help unseat a crusty and constraining model of what it is to be a person.”
A thoughtful, well-rendered collection of musings on identity.
