Although the first-person approach can be a guide for research, it does not unequivocally work as a writing style. Because she draws heavily on her friendship with Chang, Kamen frequently interjects herself into the narrative. While the personal connections between Kamen and Chang add and help evaluate pieces to the puzzle, it at times goes to extremes. For example, Kamen is inclined to detail some of her own medical problems and her efforts to cope with them, apparently believing they are at least some basis for comparison in trying to understand Chang's state of mind. Invariably, though, those details shed light on Kamen, not Iris Chang. Likewise, some may be put off by Kamen's somewhat non-linear approach to the book. Her chapters are named after questions that frame her search, although some of those questions are not ones a reader may think necessarily pertinent, at least as phrased by Kamen.
The definitive Iris Chang biography probably will not exist until sometime after 2015. That is when her personal papers from the last years of her life, archived at Stanford University, will be available to the public and researchers. Until then, Finding Iris Chang serves as a useful introduction to the human side of an exceptional and talented woman.
Article comments