Free Woman Who Could Not Forget by Richard Rhodes Page B

Iris immediately submitted her writings to the newspaper. Her two poems and one advertisement, as well as Elaine’s, were accepted and published in the first sample issue of That Newspaper . She got excited, and she and Elaine went so far as to peddle that issue of the newspaper on the University of Illinois campus. Iris and Elaine asked students to buy the issue and support the continuous publication of That Newspaper . Their presence on the campus caught the eye of the reporter Karen Brandon of The Daily Illini, the UI student newspaper. Brandon wrote an article in The Daily Illini on April 19, 1979. She described that “Iris Chang, a fifth-grader at Yankee Ridge Elementary School, ‘hoped’ that the paper will continue to be printed and had further suggestions for it to include comics, more poems, and horoscopes. Chang not only writes for That Newspaper , but also co-writes with a friend a ‘very private newspaper’ she refused to comment on.” In the article, Brandon continued, “Who knows? That Newspaper may be fostering future Erma Bombecks, budding Art Buchwalds, or even prospective publishers of underground newspapers at the grade school level.” Indeed, who could have predicted that eight or nine years later, Iris herself would become a major contributor to The Daily Illini and later a best-selling author? Perhaps it all really did begin with Mr. Mouse!
    On Sunday, April 26, 1980, we drove Iris to Bloomington to participate in the Central Illinois Regional Young Authors Conference. It was a very big and exciting event for Iris. When we arrived, there were many young authors about Iris’s age. The conference gave every representative from each school district a certificate. Iris was one of the representatives from the Urbana School District and went to the stage to accept the certificate congratulating her for her achievement. The conference also invited a best-selling author to give a speech and later to have a book signing. Iris’s eyes were sparkling throughout the conference. From that moment, I think the fact that being an author was glamorous was planted in Iris’s mind.
    When Iris’s poems and story were selected by the Yankee Ridge School for the Young Author competition, one of Iris’s friends told her that her mother did not believe that Iris had written the poems. “Iris’s mom wrote them,” the girl told Iris her mother had said. Iris was upset and told me the story. I laughed and told Iris that she should not be bothered by those comments, but should consider it a compliment. “Alas!” I said, “I wish I could have written them!”
    From 1978 till 1983, Iris made all greeting cards by herself for Christmas, my birthday, Shau-Jin’s birthday, Mother’s Day, and Father’s Day. She wrote the words and added hand-drawn pictures. I was always moved to tears when I read the words she wrote on her self-made cards, such as these lines in the card she gave me on my birthday in June 1980:
    I hope that this card will make you happy and glad,
    For I mean to tell you that you are the best mommy I ever had! . . .
    Iris was very interested in making greeting cards for any occasion and wished to make a career out of it. She wrote to Hallmark to ask whether they needed a freelance greeting-card writer. To her dismay, the company replied that they had too many already.
    Nineteen seventy-nine was a time of transition for both Iris and me. Iris found her interest in writing, and she was like a flower in bloom. As for me, I was surer of what I wanted in life: to be not only a mother to my children and a wife to my husband, but also a useful researcher in the science I loved.
    On February 27, 1979, I got an unexpected call from my mother in New York. She informed me that she had just discovered a lump in her left breast. I flew to New York immediately. On March 26, my sisters and brothers and I were gathered and accompanied our mother to the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Hospital for the biopsy procedure.