John Green, author of the award-winning book Looking for Alaska (which I am in the middle of right now and will definitely blog about later), was recently interviewed on another fabulous blog, Pop Goes the Library. When asked what his area of pop cultural expertise was, he replied "Are conjoined twins part of pop culture? If so, definitely conjoined twins." This got me thinking about my own brief fascination with conjoined twins...

A few summers ago, I read the novel Chang and Eng by Darin Strauss. The book is a work of historical fiction about the famous conjoined twins named Chang and Eng Bunker, who were born in 1811. The twins were joined at the sternum by a flap of skin and although they could have been easily separated in modern times, doctors weren't up to the challenge 200 years ago. They were discovered in their native Siam by a British merchant and were brought to America to tour in freak shows owned by circus entrepeneur P.T. Barnum. As they became more famous, they became known as the "Siamese Twins," given that they were from Siam. This is why this term is still around today.

The twins eventually settled down on a southern plantation and married a pair of sisters, having 22 children between them. The book Chang and Eng is told from the perspective of Chang, and fictionally depicts the lives of the twins and the natural struggles that come from being less than one foot away from somebody for your entire life. Next time you get mad at your sibling, you can at least be thankful that you aren't literally joined at the hip!

For further reading about Chang and Eng, you can check out The Two: A Biography by Irving Wallace or the fictional God's Fool by Mark Slouka. For further reading about conjoined twins in general, check out Joined at Birth : The Lives of Conjoined Twins by Elaine Landau.