Mother of ‘Nanking’ Author Has Saturday Book Appearance

Just three weeks ago, Ying-Ying Chang and her husband, Shau-Jin, drove to the  in Los Altos and walked up the hill, as they always do, each November, for the past seven years.

Their friends had not yet arrived. She placed the book, The Woman Who Could Not Forget next to her daughter's headstone.

“Iris,” she said, “I finished the book. I went on a book tour. So many people remember you.”

Indeed. Seven years after Iris Chang's death, her 1997 book, The Rape of Nanking, is still remembered by the throngs who are reading Ying-Ying's new memoir about her talented and driven daughter. Nanking brought to worldwide attention the forgotten holocaust during the Japanese military occupation of the old Chinese capital in the winter of 1937-38, one that had made headlines but became a footnote after Hitler's concentration camps were discovered. Nanking was on the New York Times best seller list for 13 weeks and sold nearly half a million copies.

The interest in the author, and in Ying-Ying Chang’s account of her daughter's life, her research...and the final days before she took her own life Nov. 9, 2004, appears to be strong. In Vancouver, 300 people came to hear Ying-Ying Chang. About 100 people came to the San Francisco Public Library reading.  

With her final book appearance of 2011 coming up Saturday afternoon at the Fremont Library, the Harvard-trained microbiologist reflected on her extraordinary journey from retiring academician to book author.

The manuscript she once feared would never find an agent nor a publisher found the latter, and was printed by Pegasus Books in May. The Woman Who Could Not Forget will also be published in simplified Chinese characters in Beijing by CITIC Publishing House in the spring, and by Commonwealth Publishing Group in traditional Chinese characters in Taiwan this summer (the same publisher that has the rights to publish Steve Job's biography by Walter Isaacson). In the U.S., a paperback version is set for July.

Since , Ying-Ying Chang has been to New York, Rutgers, N.J., Toronto, Edmonton, Vancouver. She made a set of appearances in Cupertino, Oakland and San Francisco. Then she was invited to Boston and Washington D.C. Many of the appearances have been hosted by chapters of the Alliance to Preserve the History of World War II in Asia, often called ALPHA, a group which helped Iris Chang in her Nanking research and subsequent book tour.

Not long ago, Ying-Ying Chang went to Chicago, and to the campus where she and Shau-Jin taught for 30 years at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and where Iris and her brother Michael grew up. They also spent time visiting with their grandson, Christopher, who was only 2 when his mother died, now living in central Illinois. The book is dedicated to Christopher and Shau-Jin.

Iris Chang was the author of three books, and died while working on the fourth, about the Bataan “Death March” in World War II, interviewing surviving American soldiers with stories so gruesome, that Chang had had a breakdown. At the time of her death, she had been under a doctor's care with prescriptions for anti-depressants and anti-psychotic drugs for a few months.

Ying-Ying Chang's book contains detailed information of the dosages of the different drugs prescribed, her daughter's reaction to them, and her belief now her daughter's suicide was the result of inappropriate dosages of anti-psychotic drugs. 

Posthumously, at least three films, have been produced, about her or inspired by her book. Iris Chang's extensive research documents and papers are housed at the , where there is also a bronze bust of her in the Hoover Archives Reading Room, a smaller version of a statue that stands in Nanjing.

Indeed, from Boston to Vancouver, Los Angeles to Washington D.C., they not only remembered Iris Chang and her work, but also came looking for answers about the bright young woman they felt died much too soon. The audiences are heavily Chinese, because what happened in Nanking had been part of many families' lore.

Ying-Ying Chang usually uses excerpts from the book to describe the relationship between her daughter and herself and her husband, as she grew up. She talks about Iris Chang's research, the roadblocks and the discoveries her daughter made along the way (The elder Changs, who are biliterate, did much of the translating of documents), the heavy attack from Japanese rightwing historians, and of her passion and character. She reads from her daughter’s letters, which  are touching in their warmth and appreciation.

She has fielded questions about whether she was a “tiger mom,” with such a driven daughter (The answer: no). “At the beginning I had no confidence how people will like my book,” she said. But she has been encouraged by her experiences over the past six months, she said. 

She talks about her daughter’s final days, and her conviction developed over the years, that the anti-psychotic drugs her daughter had been prescribed for stress, may have been appropriate doses for Caucasian males they had been tested on, but entirely too much for small-framed Asian women like her daughter.

“At every stop, there is always someone from the audience comes to talk to me privately, to tell me what happened to himself or member of the family with anti-psychotic drugs.” 

In Chicago, a clinical psychiatrist said he read and re-read her book, then shared his observations about dosing differences between Asians and Caucasians, she said. It has made her feel less alone, she said. And what happened to her daughter is a cautionary story, she said.

With 6,000 copies sold in the U.S. at $29.95, the paperback version will be more affordable and make Iris Chang’s story more widely known, she hopes.

When they visit their daughter’s gravesite, Ying-Ying Chang said sometimes they come with large groups of friends. Not this last meeting. Only Peter Stanek, the president of the Global Alliance for Preserving the History of WWII in Asia, and his wife, Jean Chan, were coming, and afterwards they would meet Ignatius Ding, who wrote the book's forward, and others, for lunch at the Hong Fu restaurant in Cupertino.

There was ample time to reflect before the Staneks arrived.

Standing there, on that Los Altos hillside, she took in the sweeping view of the Santa Clara Valley. "I feel good now, and I wanted to let Iris know in heaven," she said. Looking toward St. Peter’s Chapel the trees in the fall are particularly beautiful, aflame in yellow and red.

"Iris, we are here to visit you," Shau-Jin Chang said. "Christopher is fine." 

Ying-Ying Chang was silent. She spoke to her daughter in her mind on that day, she said.  

I think you should rest in peace,” she thought. “The world will know the true story of your life.” 

The book reading and signing will be:

Saturday, Dec. 3, 2 to 4 p.m., Fremont Main Library, 2400 Stevenson Blvd., Tel: 510-745-1400

For information, see: www.irischang.net/news/index.php

In 2012, Ying-Ying Chang will speak at the Saratoga Library on Feb. 1, and in San Diego on March 11.