Thoughts on the suicide of Iris Chang

I knew her only by her voice. A young Chinese American author asked for my help negotiating a development and production agreement for a best-selling book she had written that was being made into a film.

The book, she explained over the phone, was the Rape of Nanking.

. . . long pause

We lost touch

She didn't contact me for a month, two months, half a year. I meant to ask how the film project was coming. How was she doing?

Unknown to me she was working on a new, even more troubling book project, this time about the Bataan Death March.

Her downward spiral

They say her work drover her insane, driving across the American South to interview survivors of the atrocities, suffering from sleep deprivation, herbal supplements, prescription medications, and memories of war. She cared too much. She broke.

Why didn't I call?

As a lawyer, your client can sweep you up into events of awesome significance, like a leaf in a storm.

In a different world, a better one, I did call and somehow saved her. This is a common fantasy.

"People die twice — once as mortals, and once in memory," Iris once told her mother. Please remember her, Iris Chang.