Woman Who Could Not Forget (36 page)

Everyone in Iris’s camp thought the story about Seymour Hersh did not make sense. Iris said if it
was
true, why had
Newsweek
not told her on Friday, November 8 in the first place?

In the meantime, Iris told us that if
Newsweek
would yield to pressure from Japan and kill the excerpt, she would immediately hold a press conference. She was sure that the news would fall on friendly ears all over the world, and the Chinese-American community and many human rights organizations would support her one hundred percent.

Iris also told HarperCollins that they should call
Newsweek
and ask them what she should tell reporters if the excerpt did not run on the 17th or the 24th. Iris also asked for a contract amendment to give her permission to give interviews on the 17th, because she had already booked speeches and interviews for her book tour, and it was not her fault that the except had not published as planned.

On November 12, the HarperCollins rights department e-mailed Iris that they had received a written confirmation from
Newsweek
that the excerpt would hit the newsstands on November 24 (in the December 1 issue) and that any publicity she did before then would not affect the excerpt.

Iris flew to Norfolk, Virginia, the first stop of her book tour, on November 14. In the subsequent days, she was busy with public speeches, interviews, and book signings in several cities, but she was still not sure whether
Newsweek
would fulfill their promise.

Although I was in Urbana while Iris was on the road, she always called to inform me that she had arrived at a new place safely. If she was too busy to call, she would write a brief message at the hotel’s Internet center when she routinely checked her e-mails. She told me she had been welcomed at every stop on the tour and that huge crowds had shown up at her lectures and her book signings. Her books sold out immediately on every occasion. I kept in touch with Iris and read all the news available about her. I was very happy to learn that her book was having such a strong start.

On Sunday, November 16,
Baltimore Sun
reporter Cheryl Tan called us at home and interviewed us over the phone; she was the first news reporter to do so. She told us that she had interviewed Iris and seen her at the book signing at the Trover Bookstore near the Capitol in Washington. She asked us how we had told Iris about the Nanjing Massacre when she was a little girl and how we felt about her book. When the article appeared in the
Sun
on November 18, I was thrilled. Deep in my heart, I silently told my parents that finally their granddaughter had told the world what happened in Nanjing in 1937. I prayed that the suffering of the Chinese people during the war would never be forgotten.

On November 18, Barbara Culliton (Iris’s former professor at Johns Hopkins) picked Iris up in Washington. Culliton had invited Iris to give a lecture and book signing at the Johns Hopkins University campus. She told Iris that she was very proud of her and her book. When they met, Iris told Culliton what had happened with
Newsweek
and her worry that they might yet yield to the pressure from Japan and kill the excerpt. Culliton said to Iris, “This is terrific news! If they actually
do
cancel your excerpt, your book will be on the
New York Times
‘Best Sellers’ list in ten minutes!”

Culliton had read the book before its publication and liked it very much. She told Iris that she personally had an interest in the book, not just because Iris was one of her former students, but because of its historical importance. She also said that she had tremendously strong feelings about journalistic integrity and wanted Iris to keep her posted as to what happened with the excerpt.

In the meantime, Shau-Jin and I continued systematically analyzing the advertisements in
Newsweek
’s past several issues. We counted an average of four to five Japanese ads a week including companies such as Canon, Isuzu, Hitachi, Sony, Toyota, Toshiba, Mitsubishi, Sharp, and Epson.

I was wondering whether Iris’s book excerpt would be published at all in the next issue of
Newsweek.
I did not trust anyone’s words anymore unless I personally saw it in print!

I knew the December 1 issue of
Newsweek
would be on the newsstands on November 24 or 25. Several days before that date, I was already starting my countdown. When Monday, November 24 finally arrived, I was so jumpy in the lab that I could not concentrate on my work. In the afternoon, around 1:00
P.M
., I started making phone calls to the newsstand of the Illini Union student center on campus and asked them if the December 1 issue of the magazine had arrived. They told me it wasn’t there yet. I asked when it would arrive. They said it was hard to say; sometimes it arrived on Monday and sometimes on Tuesday. They said if it did arrive that day, it should be in the late afternoon or evening.

I could not sit down. I was pacing back and forth in the lab, wondering whether the excerpt had been published or not. Iris was in New York City at the time, and she had not told me whether there was any news, good or bad. I firmly believed that the excerpt in
Newsweek
would be a major step in determining her book’s success.

I was so anxious that I don’t know how many phone calls I made to the newsstand to inquire about the arrival of the magazine. The girl at the newsstand must have felt my anxiety and felt sorry for me when I called again and again.

Finally, at 5:00
P.M
., the girl at the newsstand told me that the magazine was there! I ran over to the Illini Union. I could hardly breathe as I frantically flipped through the pages. There it was! I stood there and read through the whole excerpt carefully. It was a total of three pages, with the front page titled “Exposing the Rape of Nanking.”

I was thrilled. I read the excerpt twice while I was still standing there, just to make sure it was real. I ran back to the lab and called Shau-Jin and told him the good news.

When we finally got home that evening and examined the magazine carefully, we noticed that there was not a single Japanese ad in this issue. Additionally, there was no special headline on the cover to advertise the excerpt, nor in the “Top of the Week” section inside. The three pages of the excerpt were buried in the middle of the big news of that week: the amazing septuplets who had been born to a family named McCaughey! Obviously, the magazine did not want to make a big deal of this excerpt.

Looking back, if Iris had not pressed
Newsweek
to give a reason for the delay, could they have caved in to the pressure of the Japanese companies and killed the excerpt entirely? Was the magazine “terrified” when they heard that Iris would go public about the story if they killed it? Although
Newsweek
denied that the pull-out of the Japanese ads was the reason for the delay, no one could explain why the December 1 issue had not had a single Japanese ad, whereas the November 17 issue had carried double the usual number of such ads.

One of Iris’s friends told her that it seemed like there were two set of rules in the media—one for Asians, and one for everyone else. Would Mercedes-Benz dare challenge
Newsweek
if they printed a book excerpt on the Holocaust written by a Jew? Never!

In spite of the fact that the excerpt in
Newsweek
was not prominently advertised on the cover of that issue and that the two-week delay might have missed the ideal timing for book reviews, it still made a tremendous contribution to getting the word out about the book—the first step to making
The Rape of Nanking
a best seller!

Iris had to overcome many external obstacles before
The Rape of Nanking
was finally published, from the dissolution of Basic Books to the
Newsweek
incident, but she had also faced some internal issues as well. In April, Iris had phoned and had a long discussion with us. She was at a crossroads. The book was in its final production stages and would be published soon, but she had not landed an advance for a next book. Brett urged her to find a nine-to-five regular job to bring in some steady income. Up to that time, her book advances, the NSF grant, and other grants had not sufficiently supported her living and research expenses without Brett’s subsidizing. Brett said that her writing profession had been a money-losing business up to that moment.

She said that she could either continue writing book proposals, or she could look for other jobs such as technical writing or a faculty teaching position, and then she could return to her book proposals once things had stabilized. Shau-Jin and I, as well as Brett, encouraged her to get a teaching job. Shau-Jin and I were against the technical writing job. We felt that she had a talent for creative writing, and a teaching job actually was best for her, as it would give her a chance to also pursue independent projects that interested her, as well as work with and meet other people, something she always liked doing. Plus, many teachers wrote books on the side, as the greater flexibility of the teaching schedule was a perfect fit for an author.

In this discussion, we expressed our views on her book and the issue of money. Of course, we said that everyone needed some money to support his/her basic living, but not all contributions to society could be measured by money. We told Iris that even though her book-writing career up to that moment had not made much money, what she was doing was
very
important for society. Her books had intrinsic value in a way that many other books did not, and we were very proud of her.

During the long discussions we had over the phone, Iris poured her dreams and ambitions out to us. Iris told me that recently she had had a chat with one of her girlfriends in Chicago. Her friend asked Iris what her ultimate goal was in her life. Iris told her friend her ambition was to leave her mark in the literary world and to become a world-famous writer. The friend criticized Iris for being too individualistic. She didn’t understand why people wanted to be stars, or to be famous. Iris said to me, “What’s wrong with dreaming of the Olympic gold, or the Nobel Prize?” She continued, “What’s wrong with pushing myself to achieve my full potential?”

After her failure to find a publisher for her book proposal on the biological clock, Iris never stopped thinking about her next project. When she talked about her book ideas, she was filled with enthusiasm. She described a number of possible topics—an epic novel of espionage, inter-racial marriage in the U.S., a historical novel of Chinese building a transcontinental railroad in the American West. She told me that she was constantly studying the best writing in world literature and hoped one day she could be considered on the same level as those authors. When she thought about that, she was so thrilled that she almost wanted to scream. She told me that she wanted to dream big and said that her dad and I were the only ones who would not criticize her as being “megalomaniac” or too “individualistic”!

Many times Iris told us about how she admired Scarlett O’Hara, the main character in one of her favorite books,
Gone with the Wind
. She said that O’Hara’s appeal was her passion and determination. Triumph over adversity was one of the most enduring themes in literature, and that was what she wanted to pursue.

Iris also told me that one of her male friends had confided to her that he liked to hire women because a) they worked hard, b) they worked for less money, and c) they had no ambition, so they wouldn’t try to steal his contracts. Iris was furious when she heard that. She vowed that she would never fall into that trap. She wanted to find the traits of successful women and write a book on that. She also confided to me that she wanted to have three children in the next few years, but she would plunge back into her writing career after her children left for college. Then, she said, she would have at least twenty years of a writing career without interruption. She wanted both: family
and
career.

Iris was quite sentimental and told me that life was so short. She wanted to accomplish a lot in a short time; yet she never felt she had enough of it. She said she had to seize the moment, right this second! Life would vanish one day, she said, but books and words would be left behind, just like those masterpieces of literature she was reading. She said “Words are eternal.” She told me she had to work harder to achieve everything she wanted. Why she was so driven in a way rarely seen in other people? I cannot answer that. Sometimes I was just amazed and inspired by her determination to achieve the best. It inspired me to want to be my best as well.