Mother reflects on daughter’s life

Ying-Ying Chang quoted the words of her daughter, New York Times best-selling author Iris Chang, during her presentation for the Asian Cultural Center’s monthly “Over a Cup of Tea” discussion Thursday in the Hoagy Carmichael Room.

“People die twice, once as mortals and once in memory,” Ying-Ying Chang quoted.

Iris Chang achieved literary fame for her 1997 non-fiction book “The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II.” It is credited as the first major book written in English to raise awareness about Japanese war crimes in China during World War II.

Ying-Ying Chang was invited to speak about her memoir “The Woman Who Could Not Forget: Iris Chang Before and Beyond ‘The Rape of Nanking.’”

“We thought we should extend an invitation for Ying-Ying to come to IU,” said Melanie Castillo-Cullather, ACC director. “We strongly feel that she has a very important message and a very important story to share (with) the students.”

Ying-Ying Chang said she decided to write “The Woman Who Could Not Forget” after her daughter committed suicide in November 2004.

“(Iris was) a really private person,” Ying-Ying Chang said. “No one really knows the other side of her. I wanted to give the world a complete picture of Iris’s life and preserve her legacy.”

Iris Chang was a curious child who asked many questions about why her family came to America, Ying-Ying Chang said.

She was told they grew up in China and lived through Japanese bombings and attacks from 1931 to 1945.

Ying-Ying Chang said she thinks her daughter might have thought they exaggerated the extent of the crimes during the war. However, she said her daughter was always interested in her family’s history.

After Iris Chang finished her first book, “Thread of the Silkworm,” in 1994, she was looking for a new project, Ying-Ying Chang said.

“At that time, she was in Santa Barbara,” Ying-Ying Chang said. “She drove all the way to northern California to see this exhibition. She was shocked. She realized it was worse than what we told her.”

Ying-Ying Chang said Iris Chang was deeply affected by her research and writing of “The Rape of Nanking,” but Ying-Ying Chang does not believe it caused her daughter’s suicide seven years later.

She said her daughter was taking a specific type of anti-depressant, called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, at the time of her suicide.

Psychiatrists later found that the drug can increase suicidal thoughts.

Regardless of the way her daughter died, she said it is important to remember how Iris Chang lived.

“She not only fought for Chinese-Americans or Asian-Americans, she spoke for all injustice (and) fought for human rights,” she said. “She said only education can diminish differences between race, religions. I hope this book will give readers the true story about my daughter.“