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

by Paula Kamen

Copyright 2007 by Paula Kamen. All Rights Reserved.

Categories:  Biography  Contemporary  Memoir  Psychology

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Description

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 Chang is a tribute to a lost heroine, a portrait of the real and vulnerable woman who inspired so many around the world.

Praise for Finding Iris Chang

"A rewardingly complex portrait of a driven and troubled woman."
&mdashKirkus Reviews

"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 reported 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 Iris's 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 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

Extended Copyright Information

Copyright 2007 by Paula Kamen. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Previously published by Da Capo Press, a member of the Perseus Books Group.

Cover design by Georgia Liebman.
Cover photograph by Tamara Staples; college graduation photograph courtesy of the University of Illinois Archives; Iris Chang Papers.

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, Finding Iris Chang: Friendship, Ambition, and the Loss of an Extraordinary Mind, Her Way: Young Women Remake the Sexual Revolution, and Feminist Fatale. Her commentaries have appeared in the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, and Salon.com, among other publications. She lives in Chicago.

Opening Lines (Experimental)

From September 23, 1994 e-mail:
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 ...

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