The Woman Who Could Not Forget
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The poignant story of the life and death of world-famous author and historian Iris Chang, as told by her mother.
Iris Chang's bestselling book, The Rape of Nanking, forever changed the way we view the Second World War in Asia. It all began with a photo of a river choked with the bodies of hundreds of Chinese civilians that shook Iris to her core. Who were these people? Why had this happened and how could their story have been lost to history? She could not shake that image from her head. She could not forget what she had seen.
A few short years later, Chang revealed this "second Holocaust" to the world. The Japanese atrocities against the people of Nanking were so extreme that a Nazi party leader based in China actually petitioned Hitler to ask the Japanese government to stop the massacre. But who was this woman that single-handedly swept away years of silence, secrecy and shame?
Her mother, Ying-Ying, provides an enlightened and nuanced look at her daughter, from Iris' home-made childhood newspaper, to her early years as a journalist and later, as a promising young historian, her struggles with her son's autism and her tragic suicide.
The Woman Who Could Not Forget cements Iris' legacy as one of the most extraordinary minds of her generation and reveals the depth and beauty of the bond between a mother and daughter.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Why did the brave, brilliant author of The Rape of Nanking, a groundbreaking study of Japan's brutal occupation of the city, commit suicide in 2004, at age 36? Her mother, Ying-Ying Chang, a Harvard-trained biochemist, wants to give an accounting of her daughter's life and the events leading up to her death. But this plodding chronicle is weighted with such details as why her daughter was named "Iris" and Iris's participation in a homecoming parade. Still, Iris's perseverance in pursuing goals, including writing her book, comes through. Despite providing ample evidence that Iris was in serious mental distress e-mails cited here; her fear that her son was autistic (though he was too young to be diagnosed); her hair falling out "in clumps in the shower" when writing about Nanking Ying-Ying gives some credence to a possible conspiracy, perhaps by Japanese right-wing extremists. (Iris reported being threatened during her book tour.) But primarily she blames the psychotropic medications Iris was taking for her depression. Moving as Ying-Ying's account is, this still mystifying tale calls for a journalistic account that would be more definitive and less defensive. 24 pages of b&w photos.
