Iris Chang Quotes

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Iris Chang

Profession : Historian

Birth : March 28, 1968

Almost all people have this potential for evil, which would be unleashed only under certain dangerous social circumstances.

Iris Chang

Somebody who was born in this country who visited China would later face difficulty getting back in to the USA. We have to keep in mind that the struggles of the Chinese against these exclusion laws really laid down the foundations of civil rights law.

Iris Chang

I received an honorary doctorate for my work. Maybe one of these works is considered the equivalent of a Ph.D.

Iris Chang

When the Chinese first came to San Francisco, they were actually welcomed by the mayor and they had special ceremonies for them-again this is when their colony was very small, only a few Chinese.

Iris Chang

When you take something extremely broad, then it is not a work of expansion or work of compression. It's hard because you have to decide what to throw out.

Iris Chang

The whole story of the comfort women, the system of forced sexual slavery, the medical experiments of Unit 731, is not something that is in the US psyche. That is changing because many books are coming out.

Iris Chang

For some reason, I seem to be bothered whenever I see acts of injustice and assaults on people's civil liberties. I imagine what I write in the future will follow in that vein. Whether it's fiction or non-fiction.

Iris Chang

Of course, in the United States, which at the time was a very young country, there were also class distinctions. They weren't as pronounced, but they quickly evolved as well.

Iris Chang

There isn't much discussion of ruling class in America even in Boston, probably one of the most class-conscious cities in the country?

Iris Chang

Racism is always there underneath, but usually it is exploited in these times of economic crisis, and it's hard to find out when one slides into another.

Iris Chang

It's much more difficult to work on a broad subject than on a specific one, because even if it's hard to find the information, if you look hard enough for something specific you will find it, and you will discover things that you wouldn't have thought of before.

Iris Chang

The worst... was what the Pakistani soldiers did to the Bengali women after their failed rebellion.

Iris Chang

Your first duty as a writer is to write to please yourself. And you have no duty towards anyone else.

Iris Chang

If the conditions were right there could be great acceptance. Often it is only when they pose an economic or political threat that it turns really ugly.

Iris Chang

They probably do have an Asian Barbie.

Iris Chang

Now, most of the new immigrants coming to this country are from Asia as opposed to Europe.

Iris Chang

Whatever is not commonly seen is condemned as alien.

Iris Chang

There are now hundreds of thousands of new engineers that are being trained in China. If people start finding themselves losing their jobs, not to the Chinese here but because China has become such a dominant force - then there could very well be a backlash.

Iris Chang

There is also an epidemic of infertility in this country. There are more women who have put off child-bearing in favor of their professional lives. For them, the only way they are going to have a family is to adopt from China.

Iris Chang

It's a wonderful thing to see a segment of our population that is open and eager to learn more about Chinese culture. It has filtered into the mainstream. You see credit-card ads on TV with white couples and Chinese babies.

Iris Chang