View Shopping Cart Your Famous Chinese Account Shopping Help Famous Chinese Homepage China Chinese Chinese Culture Chinese Restaurant & Chinese Food Travel to China Chinese Economy & Chinese Trade Chinese Medicine & Chinese Herb Chinese Art
logo
Search
March 8, 2014
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
Iris Chang

Wikipedia

 
Image:Iris pic2.jpg|thumb|right|Iris Chang

Iris Shun-Ru Chang (Traditional Chinese character|Traditional Chinese: 張純如, Simplified Chinese character|Simplified Chinese: 张纯如; Pinyin: Zhāng Ch?nr?; March 28, 1968–November 9, 2004) was a freelance Chinese American historian and journalist. She was best known for her popular but controversial account of the Nanjing Massacre, The Rape of Nanking (book)|The Rape of Nanking. She committed suicide in 2004 after suffering from Clinical depression|depression.



The daughter of two University professors who immigrated from Taiwan, Chang was born in Princeton, New Jersey and was raised in Champaign, Illinois|Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, where she attended University High School. She earned a Bachelor's degree|bachelor's degree in Journalism at the University of Illinois, and later worked as a New York Times stringer from Urbana-Champaign. After brief stints at the Associated Press and the Chicago Tribune, she began her career as a writer, and also lectured and wrote articles for various magazines.



Though not a trained historian, Chang wrote three notable works that document the experiences of Asians and Chinese Americans in history. Her first book, titled Thread of the Silkworm (1995), tells the true story of the China|Chinese professor, Dr. Tsien Hsue-shen during the Red Scare in the 1950s. Although Tsien was one of the founders of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and helped the U.S military debrief Nazi scientists for many years, he was suddenly falsely accused of being a spy, Communist Party member, and placed under house arrest from 1950 to 1955. Dr. Tsien Hsue-shen left for the People's Republic of China in September of 1955 aboard the merchant ship President Cleveland. Upon return to China, Tsien developed the Don Fong missile program, and later the Silkworm missile, which would endanger U.S. warships during the Persian Gulf War. The USS Missouri was attacked by two Iraqi Silkworm missiles in February of 1991, but only debris hit the Missouri as two Sea Dart missiles fired from the HMS Gloucester took out the Silkworms.

Her second book, the best selling The Rape of Nanking (book)|The Rape of Nanking (1997), documents the massacre of Chinese by Japanese soldiers during World War II, and includes interviews with victims. Finally, The Chinese in America (2003) describes the overall history of Chinese immigrants.



Chang suffered a mental breakdown that required hospitalization while researching her fourth book, about U.S. soldiers who fought the Japanese in the Philippines during World War II and the Bataan Death March. Even after the release from the hospital, she still suffered from Clinical depression|depression. She lived in Sunnyvale, California with her husband Brett Douglas, and their 2-year old son Christopher. On November 9, 2004 at about 9 a.m., Chang was found dead in her car by another motorist on a rural road south of Los Gatos, California|Los Gatos and west of California State Highway 17, in Santa Clara County, California|Santa Clara County. Investigators concluded that Chang had shot herself in the head.

Reports say that news of her suicide hit the massacre survivor community in Nanjing hard. In tribute to Chang the survivors held a service at the same time as her funeral in Los Altos on Friday at the victims' memorial hall in Nanjing. The victims memorial hall in Nanjing, which collects documents, photos, and human remains from the massacre, will add a wing dedicated to Iris Chang next year.



  • http://www.irischang.net IrisChang.net

  • http://www.jhu.edu/~jhumag/1197web/nanking.html Essay by Sue De Pasquale

  • http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/11/11/MNGB59PKL01.DTL San Francisco Chronicle, November 11, 2004 - Chinese American writer found dead in South Bay

  • http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R306231000 Penny Nelson talks to Iris Chang June 22, 2003 on KQED FM Forum.

  • http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2004/11/30/iris_chang/index.html Kamen, Paula, "How 'Iris Chang' became a verb: A eulogy," Salon.com, 30 Nov 2004

  • http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/11/20/DDGN29TV0G1.DTL San Francisco Chronicle, November 20, 2004 Iris Chang's suicide stunned those she tried so hard to help



Category:1968 births|Chang, Iris
Category:2004 deaths|Chang, Iris
Category:Chinese American writers|Chang, Iris
Category:Chinese Americans|Chang, Iris
Category:United States historians|Chang, Iris
Category:Suicides|Chang, Iris
Category:Literary Suicides|Chang, Iris


de:Iris Chang
ja:アイリス・チャン
nl:Iris Chang
zh:张纯如

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Iris Chang".


Last Modified:   2005-02-25


Search
All informatin on the site is © FamousChinese.com 2002-2005. Last revised: January 2, 2004
Are you interested in our site or/and want to use our information? please read how to contact us and our copyrights.
To post your business in our web site? please click here. To send any comments to us, please use the Feedback.
To let us provide you with high quality information, you can help us by making a more or less donation: