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A review by bringlaurasnacks
The Rape of Nanking by Iris Chang
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
What can you even say about this book? It was horrifying, but I could not stop reading. This account of the real events of the Japanese atrocities in Nanking and by extension the rest of China during WWII will haunt you. It is a further crime against humanity how unaware the general public is of these events.
Beyond the historical accounts I found the second half of this book nearly as troubling as the first. I could not help but draw parallels between Japan's attempt to censor and minimize their own crimes (can we just call this genocide?) in texts and their education system to the current attempt to purge black history from the American school systems. This is an absolutely necessary read for every citizen of the world. "As Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel warned years ago, to forget a holocaust is to kill twice."
"Apparently some quirk in human nature allows even the most unspeakable acts of evil to become banal within minutes, provided only that they occur far enough away to pose. O personal threat." -Iris Chang
Beyond the historical accounts I found the second half of this book nearly as troubling as the first. I could not help but draw parallels between Japan's attempt to censor and minimize their own crimes (can we just call this genocide?) in texts and their education system to the current attempt to purge black history from the American school systems. This is an absolutely necessary read for every citizen of the world. "As Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel warned years ago, to forget a holocaust is to kill twice."
"Apparently some quirk in human nature allows even the most unspeakable acts of evil to become banal within minutes, provided only that they occur far enough away to pose. O personal threat." -Iris Chang
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Child death, Death, Genocide, Hate crime, Rape, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Trafficking, Murder, Colonisation, and War