Success as an author made Iris Chang a public figure. Iris Shun-Ru Chang was a Chinese-American historian and journalist. She finally agreed that she would talk to me. "A lot of people -- depending on how disturbed they are -- feel that people are plotting against them." Her last, widely-acclaimed book focused on Chinese immigrants and t heir descendents in the United States their sacrifices, their achievements and their contributions to the fabric of American culture, an epic journey spanning more than 150 years. To soothe the pain of her loss, it would be tempting to seek a single, simple explanation for the suicide of Iris Chang. She easily passed the 20 exams necessary to qualify, only to be told that she must take five more. Then she got back up again. asked Iris, knowing Martel had been saved from near starvation by the brushy mustache he wore. But not so well known is that the idea for the book came to author Iris Chang while she was in Cupertino at the in December 1994. "For anybody who experiences mental illness for the first time, it's very hard to accept that it is your biology that is making it happen. Their famous daughter, whose 1997 bestseller, The Rape of Nanking, unearthed the forgotten holocaust of the Second World War when . But the nanny spoke only Mandarin. "I spent several hours with each one, getting the details of their experiences on videotape. Iris Chang received several other awards, including the Woman of the Year award from the Organization of Chinese Americans, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Program on Peace and International Cooperation Award. The result, Finding Iris Chang: Friendship, Ambition, and the Loss of an Extraordinary Mind, out this month from Da Capo Press, details Changs celebrated and controversial career as a journalist and historical author as well as Kamens relationship with her. At Johns Hopkins, Iris studied playwriting, fiction, poetry and science writing. FINDING IRIS CHANG: FRIENDSHIP, AMBITION, AND THE LOSS OF AN EXTRAORDINARY MIND, Finding Iris Chang: Friendship, Ambition, and the Loss of an Extraordinary Mind, 2023 Chicago Police District Councils Voter Guide, Proudly powered by Newspack by Automattic. One of Iris' best friends, Barbara Masin, came up from Santa Barbara for a long weekend visit. The medicine was probably not right for her.". She passed the iron gates of Calvary Catholic Cemetery, where marble statues of winged angels, their heads bowed in prayer, mark the graves of early settlers. ", Iris had convinced her doctor to reduce her dosage. Her long-distance engagement to Brett entered its second year. So was her car. Her international best-seller, The Rape of Nanking, examined the slaughter, rape and torture of hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians by Japanese soldiers during World War II. Later, Iris told interviewers that, as a child, "it was hard for me to even visualize how bad it was, because the stories seemed almost mythical -- people being chopped into pieces, the Yangtze River running red with blood. On Saturday night they went to dinner at Fresh Choice and out to the movies. Armed Suspect Prompts Lockdown At South Bay Childcare Center, Apple Firing Hundreds Of Contractors: Report, 'Our Planet Live In Concert' 2023: Performing Arts Center, San Jose, Santa Cruz Co. Fairgrounds Foundation All-You-Can-Eat Crab Feed 2023: Watsonville, Mission Valley Chorus All-You-Can-Eat Crab Feed 2023: Campbell, [FREE Event] Get Ready for Senior Year! First she thought it would be a couple of weeks" before she improved, "but we tried to convince her that it would be several months, because that is what the doctors said. He framed it and hung it on a wall in his home. Newsweek ran an excerpt, and soon Iris was a familiar face on TV news shows. Such harsh logic, symptomatic of the disease, rendered her unable to extend her own magnificent compassion to herself. Iris Chang. She was seeing a therapist two to three times a week, Brett said, but fought against having family members participate. But lunch lasted through dinner. Hundreds gathered for the memorial service and burial. "Iris is sensitive, but she got charged up," he recalled. Brett soon grew concerned that Iris was overextended. "He made breakfast for me," she said. She used a post office box, never her home address, for mail. He recalled telling Iris about the worst of his Bataan experiences. Iris Shun-Ru Chang (Hanzi tradisional: . Everything points to suicide.". ", Iris was a serious child, her mother recalled. This was not her first visit. "Most lived in dark, squalid apartments cluttered with the debris of poverty and heavy with mildew and humidity," she wrote. Dive into our most recent stories and exclusive insights from our editors and staff. Ran on: 11-20-2004 Books by. This bustling city of 6 million glimmers. "It was family lore. I will stop by to visit my parents then go for a long walk. But for us to be able to write nonfiction, the stories of our lives -- on a lot of levels, it was revolutionary. "Twice I broke down and had to leave the room.". Chang is the subject of the 2007 biography Finding Iris Chang,[1] and the 2007 documentary film Iris Chang: The Rape of Nanking starring Olivia Cheng as Iris Chang. She was an able journalist, but she allowed herself to become deeply involved emotionally in her subjects, which gave her accessibility. She was too strong-willed not to.". Meanwhile, they decided they had put their plans for a family on hold long enough. Now, it becomes our treasure. "I knew Iris was not right," her mother said. She knew where to find the glass case of Civil War era pistol replicas, classified as "relics." She never did sleep very well or eat very well.". Christopher R . Their second child, Michael, was born in 1970. ", Baker explained his conclusion: "There's no evidence that any kind of conspiracy caused her death. If she had a brain tumor, people would better understand.". "There were up and down periods," he said. Chang menikah dengan Bretton Douglas, yang dijumpainya di perguruan tinggi, dan memperoleh seorang anak lelaki, Christopher, yang berusia 2 tahun pada saat ia meninggal dunia. After dinner Monday night, Iris returned a call to her agent. and Cal Tech, Tsien became a professor at both universities and a brilliant space age pioneer. That book would sell half a million copies. Open sky surrounds broad, rolling lawns at the crest of a hill. She harbored hundreds of Chinese women and children there during the occupation. Still, the depression failed to lift. By the time that was done, it was already eight years. She had gained an international reputation in 1997 when she was only 29 for writing "The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II." But all of them wanted the opportunity to talk about the massacre before their deaths. After he and his fellow soldiers had been starved and beaten for months, a Japanese guard knocked him to the ground, piercing his chest with his bayonet. After eloquent eulogies by family and friends, a tribute written by U. S. Rep. Michael Honda was recited, which he had read into the Congressional Record earlier that week: "Her fierce pride of her Chinese American heritage empowered others with the certainty that they were truly Americans Our community has lost a role model and close friend; the world has lost one of its finest and most passionate advocates of social and historical justice. She was trying to be a top-notch mother and she was also trying to prepare for her trip.". But Into the Numbers, by the Chinese-American playwright Christopher Chen, genuinely is. -- Did her single-minded determination, her habit of working beyond exhaustion, contribute to her death? LOS ALTOS, CA - NOVEMBER 19: (L-R) Brett Douglas, husband of Iris Chang, walks behind a hearse carrying her body with her brother Michael Chang, mother Ying-Ying Chang and father Shau-Jin Chang during funeral services November 19, 2004 at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Los Altos, California. Please reload the page and try again. There is always free will. She is best known for her best-selling 1997 account of the Nanking Massacre, The Rape of Nanking. There was an error and we couldn't process your subscription. On Nov. 9, 2004, historian Iris Chang was found dead on a rural California road just south of Los Gatos. She would have a team of three vets and their children and their wives. As long as I am alive, these forces will never stop hounding me. In the final version, she added: "There are aspects of my experience in Louisville that I will never understand. 1837 brunswick rifle She came alive before crowds -- she loved to share, and she was interested in other people's lives. So she took a little bit and then she stopped -- and it shouldn't be stopped like that. Chang grew up hearing stories about the Nanking massacre, from which her maternal grandparents managed to escape. She passed the football field and the blocky, concrete auditorium of James Lick High School. The lack of sleep can exacerbate the illness and vice versa. They brought her home, and at first Iris responded well to rest and treatment. She asked if Iris had any friends there she could call for help. box 314, folder 4 . But it turned out she wasn't sleeping during the day either. The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Birth announcement for Christopher Joseph Chang Douglas 2002. box 174, folder 2-6. ", Despite support from esteemed historians and journalists, including Stephen Ambrose and George Will, some judged Iris' version of history too subjective. Iris Shun-Ru Chang (March 28, 1968 - November 9, 2004) was an American author and journalist. HANDOUT PHOTO/VERIFY RIGHTS AND USEAGE, memorial20_099_el.jpg The pool, a turquoise rectangle surrounded by pines, sat at the center of the village-like complex. At 9:15 a.m. Tuesday, a county water district employee drove past the Oldsmobile. Event on 11/16/04 in San Jose. (Photo/Robert Spencer)on 5/5/03 in New York. . They just kept saying, 'We'll print another 10,000, we'll print another 10,000.' "She ventured into a minefield of unexploded ordnance.". Ironically, the very condition that put her career on a slower track has also helped her avoid the emotional and physical burnout that the ambitious Chang experienced during her last year. copy photo of a poster promoting Iris Chang's book "The Rape of Nanking" One month later, on Saturday, Dec. 11, the same elegant photograph of Iris was displayed at a memorial honoring her on the 67th anniversary of the invasion of Nanking. The correspondent was Sgt. Overwhelming response to the piece convinced Kamen to expand her meditation on Changs phenomenal life and her shocking death. Driving west toward Santa Cruz on Highway 17, she took a turnoff 25 miles from her home and parked on a steep gravel utility road within sight of the highway. . Such "black powder" firearms, popular with Civil War re-enactors, require skill to load and fire. Another person Chang said she should thank most is Richard Rhodes, who wrote the book's introduction. "She didn't like the idea that she was taking medicine," her father said. Next to it, now, is a copy of Iris' obituary. ", Rabiner invited Iris to spend a week or so at her home in Westchester County, N.Y. "I figured we'd take a week off and just relax, walk the woods up here. The half-inch lead ball perforated her hard palate, passed through her left dural sinus, her left cerebral and occipital lobes, broke partially through her skull and came to rest without exiting her scalp. In the backseat, a teddy bear was tucked into the car seat of her 2-year-old son, Christopher. She wrote, "The America of today would not be the same America without the achievements of its ethnic Chinese," and that "scratch the surface of every American celebrity of Chinese heritage and you will find that, no matter how stellar their achievements, no matter how great their contribution to US society, virtually all of them have had their identities questioned at one point or another."[12]. Her friendship with Iris, Culliton said, "lasted from the day she walked in as a student -- in effect, to the day she died.". These were considered her finest traits. It caused an international scandal because the Japanese to this day have not conceded the extent of the wartime atrocities perpetrated against the Chinese and others. "There are a fair number of people who don't take kindly to what she wrote in 'The Rape of Nanking,' " Brett said, "so she's always been very, very private about our family life. I will follow the doctor's orders for medications. from dust we come to dust we return quran. The event was organized by Global Alliance and the Rape of Nanking Redress Coalition. Tall and slender, with glossy black hair falling well past her shoulders, Iris emerged from her car wearing blue jeans and sneakers. "So they tried to make it harder and harder." Along the way, she married Brett Douglas, whom she had met in college, and had one son, Christopher . NANKING-02/B/19JULY98/SC/TK=IRIS Chang autographing "Rape of Nanking" Sunday at the Treasure Island exhibit. Iris Chang (), before her untimely death, was one of America's leading young historians. Back in Illinois one year later, she committed suicide. Though Iris had previously suffered what her parents called "down" periods after bouts of intense exertion, the lows were never as extreme as what befell her in Kentucky. I don't know how many printings it went through. ", Between August and November, Iris saw two different therapists before finding one who seemed a good fit. Photos for a profile of Iris Chang, a prominent author and historian, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Soon they were both teaching and conducting research at the University of Illinois. Chang also experienced several miscarriages all said to influence the onset of bipolar disorder. But this time, "she appeared unhappy," the manager told investigators. "Michael is very outgoing, very extroverted -- Iris is different," said Mrs. Chang. As long as I am alive, these forces will never stop hounding me. In 1937, Vautrin was a missionary and teacher at the Nanking Women's College when its campus became part of the Safety Zone. ", Three days before Iris' death, Brett dreamed up a special weekend, just for her. "People who are in great treatment, who have all the love and support in the world, can still commit suicide," Jamison, author of "Understanding Suicide," has said. Iris would be working solo. Each breath is becoming difficult for me to take -- the anxiety can be compared to drowning in an open sea. Haunted by the belief that she had failed, Vautrin suffered a breakdown in 1940. When she tried finding books about the subject in Champaign Public Library, she found there were none.[3]. "Iris was so excited when she got the contract for the book," Brett said, recalling how obsessively she ferreted out material. Iris Chang wrote those lines in 1978, when she was 10, and 19 years before her harrowing book, The Rape of Nanking, brought her worldwide acclaim. "It's baffling to me that the U.S. today has so little knowledge of the four months we held out," Martel told The Chronicle by telephone from his home in Wisconsin. Iris Chang was a young child when her parents first told her stories about a slaughter of the Chinese people so horrible as to be almost beyond belief. ". "Iris was very sensitive. In 2019, Iris Chang Park was inaugurated in the Rincon district of San Jose.[22]. "She's very strong- willed," her mother said. She was easily hurt, though sometimes she didn't show it. Education I got off the phone confused and concerned, but I was too unsophisticated about psychological problems to realize that she was saying goodbye to me. She also focused on human rights. Chang said she usually gives three reasons for her unconventional decision to write her daughter's biography: to commemorate Iris, to tell Iris' son, Christopher Douglas, all about the. Chang said she never took any antidepressants when devastated by Iris' death. the-rape-of-nanking-iris-chang 1/8 Downloaded from dev.endhomelessness.org on March 1, 2023 by guest The Rape Of Nanking Iris Chang When people should go to the books stores, search start by shop, shelf by shelf, it is in reality problematic. "Iris was suffering from clinical depression," she said, "and it deepened rapidly over a period of about three months. Event on 11/16/04 in San Jose. I sensed suddenly threats to my own life: an eerie feeling that I was being followed in the streets, the white van parked outside my house, damaged mail arriving at my P.O. The manager knew her as a customer and an author -- Iris and Brett ate there often. ", Iris called Rabiner. This put her under enormous stress. Liz Mangelsdorf / The Chronicle. She just seemed to be more driven and to have more zest for life than anyone I'd ever met. Stress does not cause mental illness, but it can worsen the symptoms, doctors say. The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II. "He reminded me to eat and to take a walk when I was writing all day, forgetting everything else.". ", Most of the attacks came from Japanese ultranationalists. "Over a year and a half, she visited 65 cities," Brett said. I would tell her, 'You can care too much about what people say about you.' She was best known for her best-selling 1997 account of the Nanking Massacre, The Rape of Nanking. "Every single survivor I met was desperately anxious to tell his or her story," she later said. ", Christopher was born Aug. 31 that year. She was 36. She would talk about her achievements openly, and people saw her as putting them down or bragging, when it was really that she believed there was enough success to go around., A Canadian documentary about Chang is in the works and two statues honoring her have been erected since her deathone at Stanford, the other at a memorial to the Nanking massacre in whats now called Nanjing, where another woman from Illinois is honored. . Sixteen years later, and five days after her death, Brett sat in the living room of the San Jose town home they shared, surrounded by family photos. And through the months afterward, I couldnt help but think of Minnie and why she captured Iris imagination as a historian. After leaving China, Vautrin suffered a breakdown; she committed suicide in 1941.v, Tue 11/6, 7:30 PM, Barbaras Bookstore, 1218 S. Halsted, 312-413-2665, Wed 11/7, 7 PM, 57th Street Books, 1301 E. 57th, 773-684-1300. 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