閱讀張純如 Iris Chang在历史大观的作品!!! | |||||
张纯如
张纯如張純如出身書香門第，祖父是抗日國軍將領張鐵軍，後曾為臺灣中華日報總主筆。其父當年是臺大物理係“狀元”，其專著《量子場論》在美國理論物理學術界頗有影響。張純如的母親一直從事生物化學的研究工作。
張純如曾榮膺麥剋阿瑟基金會“和平與國際合作計劃”奬、美國華人團體“年度女性”稱號，並且獲得美國“國傢科學基金會”、“太平洋文化基金會”及“哈利·杜爾門圖書館”贊助。張純如曾成為世界最著名的文摘雜志《讀者文摘》的封面人物，受到許多電視節目邀請，包括著名新聞訪談節目《夜綫》(Nightline)和《吉姆萊赫新聞時間》(NewsHour With Jim Lehrer)，也為多傢出版物(包括《紐約時報》和《新聞周刊》)寫稿。她與NBA體育明星“東方小巨人”姚明、著名鋼琴傢郎朗被譽為當下美國最引人矚目的三位華人青年。
1997年，張純如的《南京大屠殺：被二戰遺忘的浩劫》在美國出版。與南京大屠殺有關的研討會也因此在美國哈佛及斯坦福等大學舉行，美國新聞媒介都大幅報道了南京大屠殺。《南京大屠殺》是首部全面記錄當年日軍血洗南京城暴行的英文著作，曾連續5個月被列為《紐約時報》書評的最佳暢銷書，引起英語世界對二次大戰時日本在中國實施暴行的關註。張純如的其它作品還有《蠶絲》、《中國導彈之父--錢學森之謎》。去年，其新書《美國的華人：一部敘述史》的出版再次引起了廣泛的註意。
2004年11月9日，張純如突然在美國加州自己的轎車內用手槍自殺身亡。有消息推測，年僅36歲的她可能因患抑鬱癥自殺
中國導彈之父--錢學森之謎》又名《蠶絲》
1996年出版
《蠶絲》講述了華人科學家錢學森為美國火箭科技作出貢獻，以及如何成為麥卡錫主義的犧牲品而離開美國，後在中國發展起中國原子彈的歷史。
1997年，張純如的《南京大屠殺：被二戰遺忘的浩劫》在美國出版。與南京大屠殺有關的研討會也因此在美國哈佛及斯坦福等大學舉行，美國新聞媒介都大幅報道了南京大屠殺。張純如自己也曾到紐約等地作關於這段歷史的演講。
《南京大屠殺》是首部全面記錄當年日軍血洗南京城暴行的英文著作，曾連續5個月被列為《紐約時報》書評的最佳暢銷書，引起英語世界對二次大戰時日本在中國實施暴行的關註。
1998年4月，東方出版社翻譯的20萬字《南京大屠殺：被二戰遺忘的浩劫》中譯本在北京出版。
1997年，張純如在接受一個主流雜志訪問時說：“這是我真正不得不寫的一本書。我寫，是出自義憤。即使拿不到一分錢，我也不在乎。讓世界知道1937年在南京發生了什麽事，對我來講，這纔是重要的。”
《華裔美國人》
2003年4月，張純如的《在美國的華人：一部敘述史》在美國洛杉磯出版。她還曾以此書主題巡遊全美發表宣傳講演。
《在美國的華人》講述了美國華人150年的移民史，讓早期華人所受的歧視公之於衆。
Personal life
The daughter of two university professors who emigrated from China, Chang was born in Princeton, New Jersey but raised in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, where she graduated from University Laboratory High School in 1985.
Chang earned a bachelor's degree in journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1989, during which time she also worked as a New York Times stringer from Urbana-Champaign, and wrote six front-page articles over the course of one year. After brief stints at the Associated Press and the Chicago Tribune she pursued a master's degree in Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.. She then embarked on her career as an author, and also lectured and wrote articles for various magazines.
Chang married Bretton Lee Douglas, whom she had met in college. The couple had one son, Christopher, who was 2 years old at the time of her death. She lived in San Jose, California in the final years of her life. Chang was an atheist.
[edit]Works
Chang wrote three books documenting the experiences of Asians and Chinese Americans in history. Her first book, titled Thread of the Silkworm (1995), tells the life story of the Chinese professor, Dr. Tsien Hsue-shen during the Red Scare in the 1950s. Although Tsien was one of the founders of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and helped the military of the United States debrief scientists from Nazi Germany for many years, he was suddenly accused of being a spy, a member of the Communist Party USA, and placed under house arrest from 1950 to 1955. Dr. Tsien Hsue-shen left for the People's Republic of China in September 1955. Upon his return to China, Tsien developed the Dongfeng missile program, and later the Silkworm missile, which would be used by the Iraqi military during its war on Iran and ironically against the United States-led coalitions during Gulf Wars One and Two.
The Rape of Nanking, Chang's most famous work
Her second book, The Rape of Nanking:The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (1997), was published on the 60th anniversary of the Nanking Massacre, and was motivated in part by her own grandparents' stories about their escape from the massacre. It allegedly documents atrocities committed against Chinese by forces of the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and includes interviews with victims. The book attracted both praise from some quarters for exposing the alleged details of the atrocity, and criticism from others because of alleged inaccuracies. For instance, Daqing Yang, a professor at George Washington University, wrote that "the publication of Iris Chang's book in 1997, with its numerous factual errors, handed the conservatives [in Japan] a much needed opportunity to blame the Nanking Massacre on the conspiracy of a second-generation Chinese American journalist." Professor Alvin D Coox at San Diego State University described Chang's book "As a work of history, Chang's book is flawed, as we have sought to demonstrate. If it is a politically motivated work of partisan propaganda, it is successful to a certain degree. But shouldn't Chang's compassion extend to the healing of old wounds rather than their revival?".
After publication of the book, she campaigned to persuade the Japanese government to apologize for its troops' wartime conduct and to pay compensation. The work was the first English-language full-length nonfiction account of the atrocity itself, and remained on the New York Times Bestseller list for 10 weeks. Based on the book, an American documentary film, Nanking, was released in 2007.
Her third book, The Chinese in America (2003), is a history of Chinese-Americans which argued that Chinese Americans were treated as perpetual outsiders. Consistent with the style of her earlier works, the book relied heavily on personal accounts, drawing its strong emotional content from each of their stories. She wrote, "The America of today would not be the same America without the achievements of its ethnic Chinese," and that "scratch the surface of every American celebrity of Chinese heritage and you will find that, no matter how stellar their achievements, no matter how great their contribution to U.S. society, virtually all of them have had their identities questioned at one point or another."
[edit]Public notability
Success as an author propelled Iris Chang into becoming a public figure. The Rape of Nanking placed her in great demand as a speaker and as an interview subject, and, more broadly, as a spokesperson for an entire viewpoint that the Japanese government had not done enough to compensate victims of their invasion of China. This became a political issue in the United States shortly after the book was published; Chang was one of the major advocates of a Congressional resolution proposed in 1997 to have the Japanese government apologize for war crimes, and met with First Lady Hillary Clinton in 1999 to discuss the issue. In one often mentioned incident (as reported by The Times of London):
...she confronted the Japanese Ambassador to the United States on television, demanded an apology and expressed her dissatisfaction with his mere acknowledgement "that really unfortunate things happened, acts of violence were committed by members of the Japanese military". "It is because of these types of wording and the vagueness of such expressions that Chinese people, I think, are infuriated," was her reaction.
Chang's visibility as a public figure increased with her final work, The Chinese in America, where she argued that Chinese Americans were treated as perpetual outsiders. After her death, she became the subject of tributes from fellow writers. Mo Hayder dedicated a novel to her. Reporter Richard Rongstad eulogized her: "Iris Chang lit a flame and passed it to others and we should not allow that flame to be extinguished."
In 2007, the documentary Nanking was dedicated to Chang, as well as the Chinese victims of Nanking.
[edit]Depression and death
A bronze statue of Iris Chang at the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall in Nanjing
Chang suffered a nervous breakdown in August 2004, which her family, friends and doctors attributed in part to constant sleep deprivation. At the time, she was several months into research for her fourth book, about the Bataan Death March, while simultaneously promoting The Chinese in America. While on route to Harrodsburg, Kentucky, where she planned to gain access to a "time capsule" of audio recordings from servicemen, she suffered an extreme bout of depression that left her unable to leave her hotel room in Louisville. A local veteran who was assisting her research helped her check into Norton Psychiatric Hospital in Louisville, where she was diagnosed with reactive psychosis, placed on medication for three days and then released to her parents. After the release from the hospital, she continued to suffer from depression and was considered at risk for developing bipolar disorder. Chang was also reportedly deeply disturbed by much of the subject matter of her research. Her work in Nanjing left her physically weak, according to one of her co-researchers.
On November 9, 2004 at about 9 a.m., Chang was found dead in her car by a county water district employee on a rural road south of Los Gatos (California) and west of State Route 17, in Santa Clara County. Investigators concluded that Chang had shot herself through the mouth with a revolver. At the time of her death she had been taking the medications Depakote and Risperdal to stabilize her mood.
It was later discovered that she had left behind three suicide notes each dated November 8, 2004. "Statement of Iris Chang" stated:
I promise to get up and get out of the house every morning. I will stop by to visit my parents then go for a long walk. I will follow the doctor's orders for medications. I promise not to hurt myself. I promise not to visit Web sites that talk about suicide.
The next note was a draft of the third:
When you believe you have a future, you think in terms of generations and years. When you do not, you live not just by the day — but by the minute. It is far better that you remember me as I was — in my heyday as a best-selling author — than the wild-eyed wreck who returned from Louisville... Each breath is becoming difficult for me to take — the anxiety can be compared to drowning in an open sea. I know that my actions will transfer some of this pain to others, indeed those who love me the most. Please forgive me. Forgive me because I cannot forgive myself.
The third note included:
There are aspects of my experience in Louisville that I will never understand. Deep down I suspect that you may have more answers about this than I do. I can never shake my belief that I was being recruited, and later persecuted, by forces more powerful than I could have imagined. Whether it was the CIA or some other organization I will never know. As long as I am alive, these forces will never stop hounding me.
Days before I left for Louisville I had a deep foreboding about my safety. I sensed suddenly threats to my own life: an eerie feeling that I was being followed in the streets, the white van parked outside my house, damaged mail arriving at my P.O. Box. I believe my detention at Norton Hospital was the government's attempt to discredit me.
I had considered running away, but I will never be able to escape from myself and my thoughts. I am doing this because I am too weak to withstand the years of pain and agony ahead.
Reports said that news of her suicide hit the massacre survivor community in Nanjing hard. In tribute to Chang, the survivors held a service at the same time as her funeral, held at the Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Cupertino, California on Friday, November 12, 2004, at the victims' memorial hall in Nanjing. In 2005, the victims memorial hall in Nanjing, which collects documents, photos, and human remains from the massacre, added a wing dedicated to Chang.