Like daughter, like mother

INTERVIEW
Like daughter, like mother

When American Iris Chang shot herself to death in 2004, it stunned the globally best-selling author's many fans. How could the steely, energetic author of The Rape of Nanking , who thought words were eternal, end her life aged only 36 years? Iris' mother, Ying-Ying Chang, tells the inside story in her recent memoir, The Woman Who Could Not Forget: Iris Chang Before and Beyond the Rape of Nanking [1]. Ying-Ying gives this deeply personal, exclusive interview to Asia Times Online contributor Victor Fic .

Victor Fic: You told this interviewer after Iris' death that you would never recover. How did you produce a memoir?

Ying-Ying: Anyone whose child dies, especially from suicide, will never recover. The sorrow overwhelmed me. I was numb. But after a year, I converted this into a positive force to continue Iris' unfinished work. We were very close and her life and spirit inspire me. I will tell the world her story so her courage and conviction


inspire others. The memoir helped to heal and strengthen me.

VF: Cite examples of how Iris was a precocious child.

YY: I saw young Iris was uniquely sensitive and curious. By grade school, she told me her feelings about the world surrounding her. She asked thought-provoking questions and had answers ahead of others. She was sometimes misunderstood by her peers as a day-dreamer when pondering.

She read continuously from when she could hold a book. Iris realized writing expressed her feelings. She penned poems in fourth grade. When 15, she started listing her goals - a turning point. By the year's end, she had fulfilled them. She exclaimed it was as if the words possessed magic. Now she realized that she could control her destiny. I describe that on page 65.

VF: Were you a "Chinese Tiger Mom" like the strict Amy Chua?

Christian Memorial Day Poems

Like many of us, I see efforts to separate God from country, and country from religion. I believe, like our nation's founders that our land of America is a land under God, and that it is God who gave us this land where we are free to worship Him. I also believe that without God's intervention our freedom would by now be lost. I dread the thought of the consequences we , as a nation, could face if we continue the ongoing efforts to disregard Him.

I tried, in writing this poem, to instill the importance of God to country.


Stand Proud, Stand Tall
by Ron Tranmer ©

The flag of our nation, a flag under God.
To our flag we will always be true.
Stand proud, stand tall with hand over heart,
as we honor the red, white, and blue.

A symbol of freedom. A banner for all
who reside underneath it's proud wave.
Though battered and torn, shattered and worn,
It flies, o'er the home of the brave.

Stand proud, stand tall, with hand over heart,
with respect for this flag we so love.
May this land always be, strong and free,
and protected by God from above.

We are a proud nation. One under God.
It was He who gave us this land.
Free we remain, to praise His great name.
Rise up, and for God make a stand.

Our flag has flown high over battlefields.
Covered caskets of daughters and sons.
Great is the cost, through lives that are lost.
We'll gratefully remember each one.

Stand proud, stand tall, with hand over heart,
with respect for this flag that we love.
May this land always be, strong and free,
and protected by God from above.

The Christian work and the evangelist

Being Poems Chiefly of the Irish Heroic Age. By WB Yeats. 87 pages. ... the great Chambers- Wylie Memorial Church, the John Chambers Memorial Church, ...

The Christian century

In This Our Day, Poems. By Edith Lovejoy Pierce. Harper, $1.50. ... and honor roll and for Memorial Day." Is There Religious Liberty in Changing Russia? ...

Masterpieces of Religious Verse

THE CHRISTIAN LIFE ... Labor Day 1712-1718 Peace on Earth 1786-1806 Thanksgiving Day 1719-1724 One World 1807- 1819 Memorial Day 1 725 -1 744 BOOK VII. ...

Camp-fire, Memorial-day, and other poems

N. IV, Christian Advocate. WHEELER (Ella) — Maurine and Other Poems. i2mo, 254 pages. Price, $1.50. " Few female poetical writers are better known ...

History of the Christian Church: From Constantine the Great to Gregory the Great, A.D. 311-600

The poems of Paulinus of Nola are full of direct prayers for the ... relics of this saint on his memorial day, and could not look on them enough. ...