In lives of two brothers, truth is relative

By Sherry Wilson

July 28, 2000 Web posted at: 1:29 PM EDT (1729 GMT)

MOUNT AIRY, North Carolina (Winston-Salem Journal) -- Don't get it in your head that a new book about the Siamese twins made famous by P.T. Barnum is true.

And certainly don't take to heart the passages from Chang and Eng that describe sex and the jealousy one twin had for the other's wife.

At least not in Mount Airy, where more than 100 of Chang and Eng Bunker's descendants are meeting this weekend for their annual reunion. The gathering known for home-cooking and taking in friends as ''honorary Bunkers'' is abuzz over the first fictional account of the twins' lives.

For the first time, many descendants who grew up avoiding discussions about the oddity of cartilage that held their forefathers together are reading about forbidden love and what the twins' sex lives might have been like. Some admitted that they are embarrassed; others are angry. Still, many of the twins' descendants lined up at Pages Books and Magazines yesterday to meet the author, Darin Strauss, and buy a copy of his book. Some bought more than one.

''I think it's real interesting to hear somebody's perspective of what it was like to be a twin,'' said Dorothy Haymore, a great-granddaughter of Eng. ''However, we don't know what they thought and how they led their lives, and that's nobody's business.''

Strauss, of New York, admits that the book is a fictionalized account of the conjoined twins who left Siam in 1829 and settled in Surry County after touring with Barnum. The book is about how Strauss imagined it would have been to be a conjoined twin, he said.

''A lot of relatives are annoyed,'' said Strauss before meeting Bunker relatives and family friends. ''I can understand that. It's a family history. I tried very hard to make it a respectful portrayal of the twins.''

The twins managed to have 21 children between them. Not dealing with sex would have been a cop-out, he said.

How Strauss imagines sex occurred while three people -- the twins and one of their wives -- were in bed wasn't the only source of annoyance. Some Mount Airy residents refuse to read it because so many basic details, such as where they lived, have been fictionalized.

For example, Strauss wrote that the twins lived in Wilkesboro. Many descendants said that Chang and Eng lived in Wilkesboro briefly but settled permanently in a farming community outside Mount Airy. They married sisters, Adelaide and Sarah, and rotated every three days between each twin's house.

James Kemp, a family friend, said that he put the book down after reading the first few lines about Chang and Eng dying in Wilkesboro.

Everyone knows that they are buried in the old White Plains Baptist Church cemetery down the road, he said.

Descendants worry that the melding of fact with fiction may cause confusion about what life was really like for the twins.

One passage describing how Chang burned Eng's house unsettled Jessie Bunker Bryant, a great-granddaughter of Eng who lives in Winston-Salem. She said she knows that the book is fiction but is still bothered by passages describing events that weren't real.

Jeryl Prescott, a professor of English at Wake Forest University, said the fictionalization of real people's lives is not new.

In the 19th century, for example, some abolitionists wrote fictional autobiographies of unidentified slaves by writing in the first-person, she said. They would combine the real stories of several slaves to create one identity that showed what life in slavery was like.

Many scholars challenge all autobiographies because writers seem to rely heavily on memory, which could be distorted, Prescott said.

Strauss' book is interesting because it is the product of the imaginative process, she said.

''Also because we don't have any way of knowing how close or how far way he is from the true story, we can't criticize him (by) saying that he's misrepresenting,'' she said. ''But at the same time we have to read it as it was intended, as a fiction.''

The book has sold better than expected. The publisher, Penguin Putnam, of New York, is out of the 36,000 copies that were printed, Strauss said.

In Mount Airy, more than 70 copies have been sold, said Bonnie Martin, co-owner of Pages Books and Magazines.

Part of the book's popularity may be due to the fascination with the twins, Haymore said. They had an abnormal body but did normal things. They played flute, chess and tennis in addition to being successful farmers.

The fact that Chang and Eng were conjoined was rarely talked about in descendants' homes, said Judy Davenport of Raleigh, a great-great-great-granddaughter of Chang. She said that her grandmother never discussed it with her because she thought there would be too many questions.

''I remember I went to college and this was my claim to fame, and nobody believed me,'' Davenport said.

Despite the problems some in the Bunker family have with the book, they said that they can forgive Strauss. After all, he has been invited to the family reunion Saturday. ''Oh yeah, that'll be fun,'' Bryant said. ''We welcome him.''

In the 10 years the family has been holding reunions, a writer or two always attends, she said. They're curious about the twins.

''They always wonder about their sex lives,'' said Bryant. ''This book tells something about their sex lives, which is terrible.''

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