irene chang -- death of a warrior

Compassion kills.

I'd never heard of Irene Chang before yesterday. And now I feel a heavy grief after reading the story of this young, brilliant author who apparently could no longer bear the weight of her own open-heartedness. On November 9, she killed herself at the age of 36.

A beautiful eulogy to Irene, written by her friend Paula Kamen, describes a woman of extraordinary energy and drive, whose code was to "think big!". She was incensed by "the forgotten holocaust of WWII" -- the brutal 1937 Japanese occupation of ancient Nanking, China, -- and wrote the bestseller, "The Rape of Nanking".

Of her own writing, she was quoted as saying, "I've always felt that in every writer there is something that dictates the theme of what she writes. For me, that's injustice."

At a congressional tribute to Irene, it was said, "The world has lost one of its finest and most passionate advocates of social and historical justice."

Writer Jeff Guinn also eulogizes Irene, saying of her:

She was brilliant, breathtakingly beautiful and young enough to have her best years ahead as a human being and as a writer... Yet there was an immense softness to her as well, a genuine empathy for others. If she felt sweeping indignation for the actions of some, she felt equally intense pain for the suffering of victims, and I believe this is what eventually caused her to take her own life. We talked about this quite often, a few times in person, more often by phone or e-mail. She would discuss her most recent research efforts -- lately, she was preparing a book on [the horrific] Japanese mistreatment of war prisoners in the Bataan Peninsula -- and she never seemed quite able to adopt a scholar's emotional distance from her subjects. Apparently, at some point a few months ago on a research trip, the agony she felt for all those whose sufferings she chronicled finally caught up with her. She returned home to California, was treated for depression and never really recovered. ...

Iris Chang was a genius, the most brilliant intellect I have ever encountered. The advantage of genius is the ability to know and feel things to a greater degree than everyone else. But that's the penalty of genius, too. You lose the ability to compartmentalize, to put harmful things out of your mind, at least for a little while. I'm certain Iris was finally overwhelmed by the sadness she couldn't stop feeling for victims whose stories she didn't want forgotten.

Because of her, they won't be.