Introduction: surprising metamorphoses -- Becoming colored in Occom and Wheatley's early America -- To make Samson Occom "so" -- "To make a poet black" -- The political bodies of Benjamin Franklin and Hendrick Aupaumut -- You are what you eat; or, Franklin's practice makes (almost) perfect -- Hendrick Aupaumut's own color -- Transforming into natives: Crèvecoeur, Marrant, and Brown on becoming Indian -- Passing as, transforming into Crèvecoeur's American race -- John Marrant becoming Cherokee -- Edgar Huntly's unsettling transformation -- Doubting transformable race: -- Equiano, Brackenridge, and the textuality of natural history -- To quote and to question: Olaudah Equiano's provocative ends -- Brackenridge and the limits of writing natural history -- Epilogue: interiorizing racial metamorphosis: -- The Algerine captive's language of sympathy.