Paula Kamen - Finding Iris Chang: Friendship, Ambition and the Tragic Loss of an Extraordinary Mind

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Table of Contents

PRAISE FOR Finding Iris Chang

[An] engrossing inquiryilluminating on many points.... The book is fascinating in tracing how Chang went about consciously creating a personal mythology.Chicago Tribune

As a tribute to Chang, and a peace offering to herself, Kamen delves into everything that may have played a role in her friends fatal bout with hidden depression.... Finding Iris Chang is not a lovely bookbut it is an affecting one.Boston Sunday Globe

Part biography, part memoir, part literary detective story and part treatise on mental illness.... In Kamens account, [Chang] emerges as a genuinely tragic figure.San Jose Mercury News

[Kamens] tale is one of friendship and discovery, as well as an insightful look at the mental illness that toppled a highly respected mind.

San Jose Magazine

At times touching and poignantKamens is a cautionary tale, alerting all of us who work in mental health, as well as those of us who dont, to pay attention to behaviors that seem too exaggerated, too intense, and too far out of the ordinary.

Psychiatric Services (American Psychiatric Association)

A heartfeltpiece of journalism.... One of the books most poignant moments comes near the end, when Kamen visits an archive that Iris haschillinglyfinalized just before her death.San Francisco Chronicle

[A] carefully reconstructed account.... Kamen invested considerable effort into drawing a detailed portrait of an unusual woman whose death left many who knew her wondering how she could have taken her own life.St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Allow[s] a glimpse into the deteriorating mind of a talented woman whose severe depression and bipolar disorder led her to take her own life.

Chicago Magazine

Finding Iris Chang gives us an appreciation of what was lost when we lost Iris Chang.The Asian Reporter

Part biography, part detective story, part memoir of a thorny but enduring friendship, this book takes us to the heart of Iris Changs tragic life. Paula Kamen writes with astute psychological insight, the intuition of a close friendand 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

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

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 Changs life and deathrevealing 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

A suspenseful investigation into a writers journey and mental illness.

Andrew Lam, author of Perfume Dreams:
Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora on KALW Radio

Part tribute, part investigation, we are shown a picture of the transformation of an introvert into a human-rights activist and speaker.

Robert Birnbaum, The Morning News

[An] homage to the author of The Rape of Nanking.... At times, Finding Iris Chang reads like a thriller.Bloomberg News

A tale of the American immigrant dream gone wrong.

The Age (Melbourne, Australia)

ALSO BY PAULA KAMEN

All in My Head
An Epic Quest to Cure an
Unrelenting, Totally Unreasonable, and
Only Slightly Enlightening Headache

Her Way
Young Women Remake the Sexual Revolution

Feminist Fatale
Voices from the Twentysomething Generation
Explore the Future of the Womens Movement

Iris Chang
1968-2004

INTRODUCTION

The Questions

From September 23, 1994, e-mail:

Dear Paula,

I can relate to your comment about being a perfectionist when doing research. This tendency seems to be universal. Consider the following paragraph from Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Samuel Eliot Morison in his book Sailor Historian: First and foremost, GET WRITING! Young scholars generally wish to secure the last fact before writing anything, like General McClellan refusing to advance (as people said) until the last mule was shod. It is a terrible strain, isnt it, to sit down at a desk, with your notes all neatly docketed, and begin to write?... Nothing is more pathetic than the gonna historian, who from graduate school on is always gonna write a magnum opus but never completes his research on the subject, and dies without anything to show for a lifetimes work....

I think youve done enough research for your sex [and gender] book. You may have enough information in your tapes and notes to sustain two or three more books. What you ought to do now is compile an outline of questions.

Ask yourself, what is the single most important question that this book will answer? That will be the thesis of your work. Then ask yourself, what are five to ten questions that must be asked in order to answer my main question? Each of those questions will be the topic of a new chapter. Then break down each chapter by asking five or ten or twenty more questions.

Use complete sentences to pose the questions, such as What did Jane Doe believe was the most serious threat to sexually active women today? If you [use] sentence fragments, such as Jane Doe or interracial marriage or rape when writing the outline, then you might get confused later on. When the entire outline is typed up and printed out, then you can go back at your leisure and answer all the questions....

Anyway, feel free to ask questions or bounce ideas off me as your writing progresses. Send me a copy of your outline its [sic] finished!

Love, Iris

My first questions about Iris:

What possessed her to kill herself?

Were there earlier signs?

Could depression come on that suddenly?

Or was it something more than depression?

Was it postpartum depression?

Did the dark topics that she covered in her work drive her to insanity?

Or, was she murdered?

Were her fears based in reality?

Was her suicide preventable?

Could I have stopped it?

Who was she, really?

How am I any different from her?

While it was a mystery to me why Iris Chang had wanted to die, I knew why she should have wanted to live.

This thirty-six-year-old woman was the most envied, and enviable, person I knew. She achieved success, by all possible external measures, to an extreme and to an almost farcical extent: She had fame and fortune, a result of her 1997 international blockbuster book,

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