I will stop by to visit my parents then go for a long walk. People tend to think that clinical depression is like a bad-hair day. A lot of people misunderstood her in that way. She harbored hundreds of Chinese women and children there during the occupation. He established an International Safety Zone in Nanking before the Japanese soldiers arrived from Shanghai. "She's very strong- willed," her mother said. "For three days they gave her medication, the first time in her life." Minnie Vautrin, also an alum of U. of I. in Urbana-Champaign, was a missionary and educator who saved thousands of Chinese lives during the Japanese occupation. When her internship was up, Iris was offered a permanent job at AP. As she wrote in the Salon piece, Kamen spoke to Chang by phone a few days before her death and was shocked to hear her normally upbeat friendwhose penchant for hours-long conversations could be exhaustingsound sad and totally drained. Chang ended the conversation by asking Kamen, should anything happen to her, to let people know what she was like before. I got more response [from the Salon piece] than any other articles Ive written combined, Kamen says. [19] Chang was also reportedly deeply disturbed by much of the subject matter of her research. "Though I had heard so much about the Nanking massacre as a child, nothing prepared me for these pictures -- stark black-and-white images of decapitated heads, bellies ripped open and nude women forced by their rapists into various pornographic poses, their faces contorted into unforgettable expressions of agony and shame. One of Iris' best friends, Barbara Masin, came up from Santa Barbara for a long weekend visit. At the Gate of Heaven Catholic Cemetery in Los Altos Hills, the photograph stood on an easel before the chapel. Register for a user account. On the day of Iris Chang's death, word spread quickly over news wires and the Internet. In three days, her parents came to take her home. Iris Chang always outdid Paula Kamen. "Why did he have to toy with me like that?" But for us to be able to write nonfiction, the stories of our lives -- on a lot of levels, it was revolutionary. Haunted by the belief that she had failed, Vautrin suffered a breakdown in 1940. Photos for a profile of Iris chang, a prominent author and historian, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. 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 lack of sleep can exacerbate the illness and vice versa. Background Iris Chang was born on March 28, 1968, Princeton, New Jersey, to a family of Taiwan migrants. ", Her mother added, "She was in therapy all the time, but it didn't help, and she took the medicine on and off. Winning that prize led to dreams of becoming a writer, her father said. This is a carousel. Mom was a self hating, mentally ill Asian woman married to a gangly white nerd. Her parents saw her off that morning. Similar situation to my own. 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." 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. This bustling city of 6 million glimmers. "We went out and did really long hikes, and it seemed to help. Her mother said, "She was always publishing something. After the release from the hospital, she continued to suffer from depression and experienced the side effects of several medications she was taking. "During the massacre some had received physical injuries so severe they had been prevented from making a decent living for decades. "When I was obsessed about Iris, my husband and my son suggested taking me to see a therapist, but I said no," said Chang. Each breath is becoming difficult for me to take -- the anxiety can be compared to drowning in an open sea. Iris pushed herself "to be the best possible mother and the best possible writer," Brett said. 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 Iris would buy lunch and dinner for everybody, and they all thought it was great. She is survived by her husband Brett Douglas, her son, Christopher Douglas, her parents, Shau-Jin and Ying . "I believe Iris in heaven would want me to do this, to channel my sadness into something positive.". She planned to visit Harrodsburg, Ky., where several survivors lived and where an old Bataan-era tank stood sentry in the town square. She had been sad for several months, but she didn't seem in an acute phase. @TheJohnRylands. Paula Kamen digs deep into the ambitious life and tragic death of her most successful friend. (The family would not name specific drugs.). She wanted to be independent, to think for herself. "She had never seen anyone for depression or anything before," her mother said. Both were born in mainland China. The conference had been sponsored by the Global Alliance for Preserving the History of World War II in Asia. "So they tried to make it harder and harder." She committed suicide on November 9, 2004. In a funny kind of way, she was resolute, she was calm. The next morning, Friday, Nov. 19, dawned cold, clear and sunny. "There is an aspect of paranoia in the majority of suicides," Baker said. She touched her fingertips to her forehead, then waved her hand to the heavens: "It's because Iris is a dreamer." "Iris was a phenomenon," said one of her former teachers at Johns Hopkins, Ann Finkbeiner. Johns Hopkins University, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: Children: Christopher: Spouse: Bretton Douglas Related Document. Her obituary was published in newspapers worldwide. -- Did she suffer a fatal reaction to powerful drugs that she refused to take as prescribed? Iris Chang. "Iris was so excited when she got the contract for the book," Brett said, recalling how obsessively she ferreted out material. Iris' reluctance to take medication may indicate the difficulty she had accepting her illness as an illness. Other parts were not. It didn't take him long to propose, but their 1989 engagement stretched out while Brett finished grad school in Urbana. Her head rested against the window. She is best known for her best-selling 1997 account of the Nanking Massacre, The Rape of Nanking. In 1991, Chang married Bretton Lee Douglas, a design engineer for Cisco Systems, whom she had met in college, and had one son, Christopher, who was two years old at the time of her suicide. The Rape of Nanking remained on the New York Times Bestseller list for 10 weeks. Her husband, Shau-Jin, is a theoretical physicist. Although Tsien was one of the founders of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and for many years helped the military of the United States debrief scientists from Nazi Germany, he was suddenly accused of being a spy and a member of the Communist Party USA, and was placed under house arrest from 1950 to 1955. Iris Shun-Ru Chang (March 28, 1968 November 9, 2004) was a Chinese American journalist, author of historical books and political activist. . Iris had been haunted since childhood by the graphic stories she was told about Nanking. They met again at Taiwan University -- and yet again when each won a science scholarship to Harvard in 1962. "Michael is very outgoing, very extroverted -- Iris is different," said Mrs. Chang. But it turned out she wasn't sleeping during the day either. "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. "I wanted to give support to families that suffered the same kind of loss, and it really worked in that way. ", Rabiner said Iris "found her voice" in promoting "Rape of Nanking." The correspondent was Sgt. . PLEASE VERIFY RIGHTS. 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. The group meets to address important issues concerning the Chinese-American community, as well as issues affecting U.S.-China relations on 5/5/03 in New York. The report stated that Iris had been taking two medications: the mood stabilizer Depakote, an anticonvulsant similar to lithium; and a smaller dosage of Risperdal, an antipsychotic drug commonly used to control mania, which is also thought to reduce suicide risk. Most lived in poverty so crushing that even a minimal amount of financial compensation from Japan could have greatly improved the conditions of their lives. 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. I said, 'You need to go to bed.' By the time that was done, it was already eight years. There, Iris had lengthy conversations with then-President Bill Clinton and gave him a signed copy of "The Rape of Nanking.". "We are a very close family. Chang also experienced several miscarriages all said to influence the onset of bipolar disorder. One of the veterans -- a colonel she had planned to meet in Louisville -- came to the hotel. In the month after her death, the image would be the central icon at each of three Bay Area memorials. "The doctors wanted her to continue in therapy, so sometimes they would go along with her. They had spent one hour together. 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. We'll be sending you The Daily Reader starting soon. The views expressed in this post are the author's own. box 314, folder 4 . SHAU-JIN CHANG (FATHER), left, AND YING-YING CHANG (MOTHER), PARENTS OF IRIS CHANG, WHO COMMITTED SUICIDE IN NOVEMBERR 2004. Some 300,000 Chinese people were brutally killed; about 100,000 women were raped in matter of 4 to 5 weeks. We've seen staged suicides and we've seen homicides. Now, it becomes our treasure. She paid the gunsmith $10. Soon she exceeded the dreams of every student in the program by getting a book contract from a major publisher while still in school. We . Still, the depression failed to lift. She hadn't ever heard much of Ray Charles' music before, and when we got home, she went upstairs and was browsing all kinds of information on Ray Charles on the Internet.". Her first, Thread of the Silkworm (Basic Books, 1995)[8] tells the life story of the Chinese professor, Hsue-Shen Tsien (or Qian Xuesen) during the Red Scare in the 1950s. "My dad was so excited that she was doing this, and so honored.". In 1995, at age 27, Chang flew from California to Nanjing in East China's Jiangsu province. 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. Irrefutably, Iris Chang won many battles in her fight for justice. Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan really blew the doors open for fiction writers. virginia men's lacrosse roster. Pearl Harbor was still smoldering when Japanese planes bombed the Philippines' Bataan Peninsula, where Martel was stationed with a National Guard tank battalion. The book signing will be held at Cupertino Community Hall on Saturday, Aug. 27 from 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. Well known since its 1997 publication is the global best seller,The Rape of Nanking. She recalls their voices quivering in outrage, as the two university scientists talked of Japanese soldiers slicing Chinese babies into thirds and fourths. 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]. Iris insisted she had already passed. ", Christopher was born Aug. 31 that year. "Iris was very loving," Martel's daughter said. [2] General 1994-2003. . Kuang's debut novel, The Poppy War, is dedicated to Iris Chang. But lunch lasted through dinner. She was best known for her best-selling 1997 account of the Nanking . The couple have lived in California since their marriage. She was very depressed." In 2019, Iris Chang Park was inaugurated in the Rincon district of San Jose.[22]. "Iris always came to us to discuss her problems," her mother said. I believe my detention at Norton Hospital was the government's attempt to discredit me. Iris was "shocked and depressed" to see their living conditions in Nanking. 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. I didn't really care if I made a cent from it. A report from the San Francisco Chronicle stated that news of her suicide had a strong impact on survivors of the Nanking Massacre and the Chinese community in general.[20]. In one often-mentioned incident (as reported by The Times of London): she confronted the Japanese Ambassador to the United States on television, demanded an apology and expressed her dissatisfaction with his mere acknowledgement "that really unfortunate things happened, acts of violence were committed by members of the Japanese military". [15], Iris Chang Park in San Jose, that opened in November 2019, is a municipal park dedicated to Chang. The Rape of Nanking, about the 1937 massacre of as many as 350,000 soldiers and civilians by Japans imperial army, had been denounced by the Japanese ambassador to the U.S., and caricatures of Chang appeared in right-wing Japanese newspapers. Each time, Iris swept into town and conducted four or five intensive interviews in as many days. About the suicide of her own daughter, Chang believed it was probably the side effects of psychiatric medication that led Iris to end her life. "Iris was much in demand and gave many talks," Brett recalled, adding with a laugh, "she was schmoozing the whole time." After a breakdown five months ago, Chang had been. It was important to me that the world knew what happened in Nanking back in 1937." Chang was born in Princeton, New Jersey and raised in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. But Kalcic and his employees did not know how unusual Iris Chang was: a world- renowned author whose work had stirred international controversy.
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