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A writer of popular histories must walk a tightwire -- it runs between what the public wants to read and what is beneficial for the public to read. Far below lie the dangers of stale academic manuals and polemicist screeds. Iris Chang moves along that wire with a ballerina's grace and the confidence of heavyweight champion.
Chang's first book, 1995's Thread of the Silkworm, drew splendid reviews and situated hers as a name to watch. Her follow-up, 1998's The Rape of Nanking, was a phenomenal success. That history, a recounting of Japan's World War II atrocities on mainland China, established Chang as an intellectual force who could also sell lots and lots of books. Though only in her thirties, Chang was, by virtue of promoting her ideas to a wide audience, suddenly but solidly in the company of old white men like Stephen Ambrose and David McCullough.
Now, after some three years of work, Chang has released The Chinese in America: A Narrative History. It is her most ambitious work to date, the account of a great people in a great nation.
Cycles and waves
With The Chinese in America, Chang returns to familiar themes of justice and civil rights. The tale is not always a happy one.
Chang finds the story of the Chinese in America to be cyclical, "one of success and abuse." She cites recent media events like the Wen Ho Lee case and the forcing down of a U.S. spy plane in China as the sorts of things that incite America's majority populations to pressure America's Chinese minorities. Since 9/11 she has seen the pressure diminish on Chinese Americans and increase...