FINDING IRIS CHANG: FRIENDSHIP, AMBITION, AND THE LOSS OF AN EXTRAORDINARY MIND Paula Kamen
But Kamen’s book, unlike, say, Truth & Beauty, novelist Ann Patchett’s controversial memoir of her thorny friendship with the late writer Lucy Grealy, relies very little upon navel-gazing rumination. Instead it offers the same meticulous attention to detail and thorough immersion in primary sources that distinguishes Chang’s exhaustively researched books, Thread of the Silkworm (1995), about an accused Chinese spy; The Rape of Nanking, published in 1997 to mark the massacre’s 60th anniversary; and the 2003 narrative history The Chinese in America. During her research, Kamen uncovered secrets that the seemingly always-in-control Chang kept close until near the very end.
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The most startling thing Kamen uncovered about Chang, however, didn’t emerge until after Finding Iris Chang was set in galleys. She’d already spoken with Chang’s widower, Brett Douglas, and knew about the fertility treatments the couple had undergone in order to have their son, Christopher, who was born in 2002. (Another of Chang’s unfinished projects was a book on defeating the biological clock.) Like others, Kamen had wondered if postpartum depression might have played a role in her mental decline. But Douglas finally told Kamen that Christopher had been born with the help of a surrogate mother.
Kamen notes that Chang applied the same careful determination to her suicide as she did to past goals. (One of the most engaging chapters in Kamen’s book concerns Chang’s unlikely—but successful—bid to become a homecoming princess.) She bought Derek Humphry’s book on suicide, Final Exit, and sent boxes of her papers to three different archives—at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Stanford, and the U. of I.—leaving Kamen a mountain of carefully organized materials to go through. Kamen recalls once commenting on how thorough Chang’s filing system was: her friend replied, “It has to be. This is for the biographers.”
Tue 11/6, 7:30 PM, Barbara’s Bookstore, 1218 S. Halsted, 312-413-2665
Wed 11/7, 7 PM, 57th Street Books, 1301 E. 57th, 773-684-1300
Thu 11/8, 7:30 PM, Women & Children First, 5233 N. Clark, 773-769-9299.
