Finding Iris Chang: Friendship, Ambition, and the Loss of an Extraordinary Mind

by Paula Kamen

Overview

Iris Chang's mysterious suicide in 2004, at age thirty-six, didn't seem to make any sense. She had more to live for than anyone, including fame, fortune, beauty, a husband, and child. Some even wondered if the controversial author of the Rape of Nanking had been murdered. Long-time friend Paula Kamen was among those left wondering what had gone so wrong. Seeking to reconcile the suicide with the image of Chang's “perfect” life, Kamen searched her own memory and scoured Chang's letters, diaries, and archival material to fill in the gaps of Chang's personal transformation-from awkward teen to homecoming princess in college, from “ex-shy person” to world-class speaker and international human rights pioneer-and later decline into mental illness and paranoia. A literary investigation of an important writer's journey, Finding Iris is a tribute to a lost heroine, a portrait of the real and vulnerable woman who inspired so many around the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780306817250
Publisher:	Hachette Books
Publication date:	12/10/2007
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	NOOK Book
Pages:	304
File size:	350 KB

About the Author

Paula Kamen is the author of All in My Head: An Epic Quest to Cure an Unrelenting, Totally Unreasonable, and Only Slightly Enlightening Headache. Her commentaries have appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post, among other publications. She lives in Chicago.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Questions vii

Chapter 1 What Did They Say Happened to Iris? 1

Chapter 2 What Did She Symbolize? 33

Chapter 3 Were There Earlier Signs? 61

Chapter 4 Why in the World Did She Run for Homecoming Court? 81

Chapter 5 Who Inspired Her? 109

Chapter 6 What Did She Tell Me, as a Primary Source? 137

Chapter 7 What Did Her Friends Observe in Those Last Years? 153

Chapter 8 What Happened in California? 171

Chapter 9 What Were Her Demons? 201

Chapter 10 Just Because You're Paranoid, Does That Mean They Still Aren't Out to Get You? 227

Afterword: Who Were the Villains? 265

Acknowledgments 279

What People are Saying About This

Molly Worthen

"Part biography, part detective story, part memoir of a thorny but enduring friendship, this book takes us to the heart of Iris Chang's tragic life. Paula Kamen writes with astute psychological insight, the intuition of a close friend--and with the determination of an investigative reporter resolved to get to the bottom of a death as baffling as it is heartbreaking."--(Molly Worthen, author of The Man on Whom Nothing Was Lost)

James Bradley

"Iris Chang inspired many, including me. Now Iris's life has inspired her friend Paula Kamen to write a tender remembrance of a great woman."--(James Bradley, author Flags of Our Fathers and Flyboys)

Helen Zia

"Journalist Paula Kamen leaves no clue unturned in this riveting narrative that is part detective story, part psychological drama, part homage to a friend, as she peels back the complexities of Iris Chang's life and death-revealing the obsessions, frailties, significance, and, ultimately, the humanity of this legendary Chinese American woman warrior."--(Helen Zia, author of Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People)

Editorial Reviews

This detached, casually brutal honesty pervades much of the book-a quality that, while seemingly callous to employ in an homage to friendship, ironically drives this book to expose the unique genius and creativity of Chang, the far-reaching effects of her persistent social activism and, sadly, the relentless escalation of the bipolar disorder that impelled her to suicide.

BookPage

Kamen provides an intimate and respectful consideration of Iris Chang that gives the reader a better grasp of Chang's flawed humanity....Beyond that, Kamen provides some context to Chang's life and slide into mental illness...A valuable book because of its handling of mental illness in general, and specifically for its insight into mental illness in the Asian community.

The Asian Reporter

Bestselling author Iris Chang's 2004 suicide at age 36 so shocked friends and colleagues that some initially claimed that Japanese extremists had murdered her to avenge Chang's acclaimed exposé in The Rape of Nankingof atrocities against Chinese civilians perpetrated by Japanese invaders in 1937-1938. Lacking the artistry of Ann Patchett's recent portrait of her friendship with writer Lucy Grealy, this effort by Kamen (All in My Head) is a tedious, obsessive, exploitative effort, drawing on her Salon.com eulogy to Chang. Kamen, who had known Chang since college, repeats some of the far-fetched, irresponsible conspiracy theories before settling on the sad truth that Chang, suffering from bipolar disorder, shot herself in the head with an antique pistol after much planning. Kamen describes her admiration for and jealousy of her "rival," Chang's grating ambitiousness and the first-generation American's attempts at being a "real" American, epitomized by her campaign to be college homecoming queen. Kamen also probes the stigma of mental illness in the Asian-American community, Chang's sense of guilt over her son's autism, her veneer of perfection and the deterioration of her mental state. Despite its flaws, this could find a sizable audience among those Chinese-Americans who lionized Chang. 60,000 first printing. (Nov. 9)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Publishers Weekly

Kamen's biography examines the life of writer and historian Iris Chang (The Rape of Nanking), who, at age 36, committed suicide. Kamen, a friend of Chang's, questions whether Chang could separate herself from the atrocities about which she wrote. The author wonders what signs she missed concerning the depth of depression that prompted Chang to take her own life. She interviewed a wide range of people who knew Chang; her professors, friends, sorority sisters, and fellow journalists attested to Chang's intensity and perfectionism, her muckraking journalistic style, her craving for accomplishment, and her desire for others to take notice of her and her work. Overall, Bernadette Dunne is a capable narrator, save for a mispronunciation of "Illini," in reference to Chang's writing for The Daily Illini newspaper at the University of Illinois. Not an easy work to listen to given the gravity of the subject matter, Finding Iris Chang is an important exploration of the fine line between genius and madness that afflicts so many exemplary writers. Recommended for larger public libraries. [Also available as downloadable audio from Audible.com.-Ed.]
—Lisa Powell Williams

Library Journal

American Author’s Association website
“A brilliant effort and one that grabs the reader's heart and mind…Intimate and reflective…A page turner…Holds you emotionally hostage long after you stop reading it…A powerful and serious book.”

Entertainment Weekly, 12/19/08
"[A] moving bio.”

Curve, August 2009
“Throughout, Kamen is a brazenly subjective narrator. As kind as she is exacting, she speaks to all sides of a woman whose name came to signify activist journalism.

From the Publisher

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