Woman Who Could Not Forget (30 page)

For Iris, her first book was her first “child.” To me, it felt like my first “grandchild” when I held that copy on November 22, 1995! It took Iris, as well as us, numerous hours, days, and months in discussions about the book, from application grants to support her research to making a trip to China, from translating Chinese articles about Dr. Tsien to rescuing her from being trapped inside the National Archives. Shau-Jin and I were always her cheerleaders. It was a journey for her, and also quite an incredible journey for us!

A
fter the book signing and Thanksgiving were over, Iris and Brett went back to Santa Barbara on November 26, 1995. As for us, we departed for Mexico for the rest of Shau-Jin’s sabbatical. One of Shau-Jin’s students, now a professor at the Institute of Physics in Merida, picked us up at the airport and drove us to a nice apartment where we would stay for three weeks. During our stay, Shau-Jin gave a series of physics lectures to the students at the Institute there, while I was earnestly reading Iris’s book. Although Iris had told us about Dr. Tsien’s life all along with her progress of the writing of the book and even though we had translated some of the Chinese articles and letters for her, we did not actually see her manuscript of the book before its publication. While I read the book, I also tried to keep a sheet recording any errors I spotted, so Iris could ask the publisher to correct them in the next printing.

By the time we returned home on December 17, I had finished reading Iris’s book and was ready to give her my comments. No question, I was very impressed by the book, but not just because my daughter was the author. It was fair to say
Thread of the Silkworm
was a well-written and thoroughly researched book. We had received many compliments about the book from other people, including our professor friends in aeronautic engineering and physics who were not afraid to “tell it like it was” and would not easily praise a book. They were really impressed by Iris who, though not trained as an engineer, could understand and write so accurately about aeronautical and rocket sciences. The book had taken Iris a total of more than three years to research and write. Iris said Susan Rabiner praised her for it, as well as a number of her friends. We had always known Iris was a talented writer, but the publication of this book proved it to the outside world.

On Sunday morning, January 21, 1996, Iris called us from Santa Barbara and exclaimed that John Taylor in Washington had just called her to say that there was a review of her book on the front page of the
Washington Post
Book World! She was so excited, it seemed like she could hardly breathe. She asked us to buy several copies of that Sunday’s
Washington Post
and save the copies for her, because she had called around her town and found that the
Post
would not arrive in stores there until Wednesday! Shau-Jin and I immediately drove to the Barnes and Noble and bought as many copies of the newspaper as they had. Right there, we read the review, which was straightforward and positive and contained no criticism of her. It was a big relief, and we were very happy and impressed. We imagined that it was not easy to get a book reviewed in a big newspaper, let alone to be reviewed by a major national newspaper such as the
Washington Post.

Pretty soon after that, many other major newspapers and magazines reviewed Iris’s book. On March 5, the
Chicago Tribune
ran a review, and on March 14,
Nature
reviewed it favorably as well. Not long after that,
Science
magazine also reviewed
Thread of the Silkworm.
In the
Science
book review, there was a photo of Dr. Tsien in front of a chalkboard, which was displayed conspicuously.
Nature
and
Science
are considered two of the most important scientific magazines in the world, with wide circulations in the U.S., and Iris told us she felt honored that her book could be reviewed in such prestigious magazines.

One of the reasons her book generated such wide interest and media coverage at the time was also due to the tension between the People’s Republic of China on the mainland and the Republic of China on Taiwan. A general democratic presidential election was going to take place on March 23 in Taiwan. The PRC was worried that presidential candidate Li Teng-hui would advocate an independent Taiwan. The PRC carried out a cross-strait military exercise and missile test on March 8 to show their military power by launching M-9 missiles into the water of the Taiwan Strait. The PRC considered Taiwan to be part of China and had warned Taiwan for a long time that they would use military power to stop any possible action leading to Taiwanese independence.

We read both Chinese and English news reports, so we were well aware of the tension between mainland China and Taiwan. I called Iris and reminded her that she should point out in media interviews for her book that the missiles used in the cross-strait military maneuver had been developed and advanced by Dr. Tsien, the father of the Chinese missile program. Very soon, Iris was interviewed by a number of radio stations on the East Coast about her book, and on March 14 she was invited by NPR’s
All Things Considered
program to their station studio in Thousand Oaks for a personal interview. All these activities were related to the tension on the Taiwan Strait. On March 23, the
South China Morning Post
, the largest English newspaper in southern China, had an article on Iris’s book, with a huge photo of Dr. Tsien wearing a military uniform and the missiles he helped develop prominently displayed at the top of the article. Certainly, this was incredible publicity for her book and helped establish Iris even further in the literary community.

In February, Iris told us that she had book signings in local bookstores in Santa Barbara; and in March, she was interviewed at Santa Barbara’s Celebrity Author’s luncheon. And the local newspaper profiled her and her book. People found that she was a good public speaker and could handle interviews very well. Indeed, she became a local celebrity.

Iris was somewhat disappointed, however, when Basic Books told her that the sale of her book was not so great, about average, although the book got great reviews in important newspapers and magazines. On March 11, 1996, Iris wrote to her dad:

Dear Dad:

Today I was interviewed by a major New York radio station (WOR) on a syndicated talk show program with only three hours advance notice. . . . The WOR station received a fax I had sent them last night and made a snap decision to book me on the show. It’s easier for me to get on the air now that tensions are rising in the Taiwan Straits.

Susan said that while my book is attracting more review attention (and favorable review attention) than the average book at Basic, it is generating average (or below average) sales. In other words, the book is noticed and well-respected by the reviewer but people who read the reviews aren’t buying SILKWORM in droves. In contrast, Basic has some books that sell tens of thousands of copies within months while getting virtually no reviews. But Susan said good reviews are important in establishing an author’s reputation. . . .

Love, Iris

She also complained to us that Basic Books had broken the promise that they would put her on a six-city book tour to promote the book. Iris said she would remember this when she was shopping for her next book contract.

With all this publicity, Iris had great confidence in herself as an “author”: she had had a book published, and there was another one on the way. In the conversations we had over numerous telephone calls to each other during that period of time, she disclosed her ambition that she wanted to be a famous author; a world-class, best-selling book author. She had been reading many famous well-written books and studied their writing styles carefully, the way priests scrutinized the Bible. She said “I do not go to church; I go to the library. I worship books.” “Books are the ultimate way for writers to reach immortality,” she would say. She wanted to be remembered after her death.

She also recalled the years when she was in grade school and high school. “I was a loner in grade school and in high school. I do not mind. I found eternal happiness when I was reading a book.” She remembered how happy she was when she found a book she wanted in a library’s card catalog. She said, “I would scrawl down the call number of the book from the card catalog and run through the aisles. My heart was pounding, and I was so excited that I hardly could breathe and it seemed like I might faint.”

Besides reading and writing books, Iris also watched many movies in her leisure time. She was a true movie buff. She told me she was interested in scriptwriting, too. She realized very early on that the greater the power of a movie, the greater the impact the movie could have on viewers. She watched Oscar-winning movies systematically. She had been studying movie scenes segment by segment. “The movies I like are tightly structured, beautiful cinema graphic films with survival themes,” she would say. She mentioned the movies she liked such as
Terminator, Apollo 13, The River Wild,
and
Witness
. “My favorite movies are ones in which the central character wants something badly, takes her fate into her own hands, overcomes obstacles, fights against odds, and succeeds at the end!”

She also mentioned movies about class struggle or class envy or war in epic films such as
Gone with the Wind, A Place in the Sun, Giant,
and
Shane
that she enjoyed. She said that a book she would like to write in the future would be also along the lines of a survival theme. She would always tell me a number of ideas for her next book. It seemed that her well of inspiration and curiosity were limitless.

On February 12, 1996, Iris called us in panic after she saw a
Newsweek
cover story on baby’s brains. She had a book idea on “how to raise baby’s IQ” or “how to raise a genius,” which now seemed to be overtaken by the
Newsweek
cover story. We told her, “You have hundreds of ideas, but you can only work on a few. You can’t write two books at the same time.” “The man who runs after two hares will get none,” Shau-Jin added. We advised her that the book she was currently writing was an important, serious book, and she needed to finish it with her full attention. “You should not be distracted,” we said to her.

At this point in Iris’s life, she felt she had reached a goal she’d set for herself, or at least she had become what she wanted to be, a book author. She now tried to help Brett excel in his career. Iris said Brett was very smart and should go to a business school to obtain an MBA. He could be a CEO, she said. The next thing I knew, Iris had persuaded Brett to apply to the country’s best business school—Harvard Business School, and she was quite energetic in helping Brett with the application. On May 19, Brett was informed by Harvard Business School that he had been admitted to the school for the fall of 1996. Iris was overjoyed, but Brett also had several good job offers from high-tech companies, and he wanted to work in Silicon Valley. Iris was insistent that Brett should go to HBS, so Brett finally agreed to enroll at HBS by delaying a year and also under the condition that Iris secure a big book advance for her next book, and thus their finances would remain secure while he was at school.

To secure a big advance for her next book became Iris’s major concern in 1996. She toyed with ideas for her next book proposal almost all the time, besides working on her book
The Rape of Nanking
. Iris had expressed to me repeatedly over the phone that she felt life was unfair for a woman such as she, who had a dream and ambitions but was limited by her biological clock—the time to have children coincided exactly with the time she could write most productively in her life. She felt trapped because she was a woman. “By the time I reach the point when I’m commanding six-figure advances, I’ll have to slow down to have babies!” she shouted. Thus, the next book idea on women’s biological clocks was born. The book she was going to propose, she said, would find a solution so career women and female intellectuals could have both family and career. Iris believed that if there was no biological clock barrier for women, they could compete with men equally. And there was modern technology available for women who wanted to delay or prolong their biological clocks. She began active research on the topic and tried to perfect the book proposal.

To her dismay, when Iris mentioned the idea to Susan Rabiner, Susan disliked the idea right on the spot. At that time, Iris told us she had found a new agent—Mel Berger, of William Morris Agency (now William Morris Endeavor), to be her next book agent. According to Iris, Mel was a powerful book agent with a number of famous clients. Iris said he had represented the author of
Apollo 13
and had helped make the book into a successful movie. She believed Mel would help her to get a big advance for her next book. Iris was thrilled that when she contacted Mel, he agreed to represent her. Mel told Iris that she could submit any book ideas to him; apparently he was impressed by
Thread of the Silkworm.
Iris mentioned her idea on the biological clock, and Mel asked Iris to write it up and send him the proposal.