【4/23/2021】CAPA-NoVA Distinguished Chinese American Project
（Written by: Xiaoyan Deng）
张纯如（Iris Shun-Ru Chang） (March 28, 1968 – November 9, 2004) was a Chinese American journalist, author of historical books and political activist. She is best known for her best-selling 1997 account of the Nanking Massacre, The Rape of Nanking (南京暴行:被遗忘的大屠杀), and in 2003, The Chinese in America: A Narrative History.
Chang is the subject of the 2007 biography, Finding Iris Chang, and the 2007 documentary film Iris Chang: The Rape of Nanking starring Olivia Cheng as Iris Chang. The independent 2007 documentary film Nanking was based on her work and dedicated to her memory.
Chang was born in Princeton, New Jersey and raised in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. She attended University Laboratory High School of Urbana, Illinois, and graduated in 1985. She was initially a computer science major, but would later switch to journalism, earning a bachelor’s degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1989. After brief stints at the Associated Press and the Chicago Tribune, she pursued a master’s degree in Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University.
Chang suffered a nervous breakdown in August 2004, and continued to suffer from depression and experienced the side effects of several medications she was taking. On November 9, 2004, at about 9 a.m., Chang was found dead in her car in Santa Clara County. Investigators concluded that Chang had shot herself through the mouth with a revolver. News of her suicide hit the massacre survivor community in Nanjing hard.
More information about Chang:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iris_Chang
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%BC%A0%E7%BA%AF%E5%A6%82
【Not only do we live among the stars, the stars live within us! 】
