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Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Lau's journal, a best seller in her native Canada, is a brutally frank account of her life on the streets of Vancouver after running away from a traditional Chinese home at the age of 14. Her extremely repressive parents forbade Evelyn from creative writing, which was both her obsession and, later, the key to her survival: "Who am I if not a writer? It's all I have-this pile of crumpled paper that follows me everywhere in my backpack, words breathing life, my existence." Her chronicles of time spent in and out of social service and psychiatric care, recurrent drug usage, prostitution out of sheer desperation, plus several suicide attempts are told with unflinching honesty that perhaps could be conveyed only by an author that young. The abuse and humiliation she suffers, similar to that portrayed in Fresh Girls and Other Stories (LJ 2/95), is often difficult to digest. While the self-absorption of a depressed 14-year-old with adolescent ideas of grandiosity does get slightly repetitive, Lau's fervent devotion to her writing (throughout her ordeals she continued to keep her journal) and her naked desire to be loved strikes the reader with a touching poignancy. Recommended, especially for women's studies collections.
Marcie S. Zwaik, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Marcie S. Zwaik, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
Even as a six-year-old child, Evelyn Lau already knew what she would be in life—a writer. She would spend countless hours in her room writing short stories and poems trying to avoid the suffocating reality surrounding her. At the age of fourteen, forbidden by her strict parents to “waste” any more of her time writing, Evelyn did the only thing she felt she could do—she ran away.
For two years, Lau lived on the streets of Vancouver. For a while she embraced her new life, seduced by the sense of freedom and independence from the pressures of school and family. But like so many others before her, Lau soon fell into a dangerous spiral of drug addiction and prostitution. During her two harrowing years on the street, Lau’s writing ambition never left her; almost obsessively, she kept a written record of her days on the street; this record is Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid.
A bestselling memoir, Runaway is a story of survival: physical, emotional and psychological. It is at times tragic, sometimes infuriating, but always honest and inspired; Runaway makes no apologies and offers no solutions. It is a vivid and frightening portrait of a young girl’s life on the street.
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Most helpful customer reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars
It draws you in,
This review is from: Runaway; Diary Of A Street Kid (Paperback)
Her writing is incredible considering her young age (at the time of originally writing and still at the age of publishing). You get drawn into her world, which is often sad. It tells the brutal truth about how little help there can be for some runaways.. how adults can pray on a young girl in her situation, and those who do want to help can have a hard time.I read this as a teen and really felt for her - I could identify with her feeling of not belonging, being a more cerebral serious type than most other teens, I felt the desire to escape too, but reading her story help me realize that running away leads to other problems you don't expect. The book took some of my innocence away but it was a good warning about human nature.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Evelyn Lau-Contemporary Artistic Genius,
By DreamPark 9 (Planet Earth) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Runaway; Diary Of A Street Kid (Paperback)
I've read a good many non-fiction-autobiographies. This book is the most viscerial, poignant, vulnerably heart-wretching; Honest, courageous mind boggling work of artistic genius, I have ever come across.A sheer out & out mind-bender. A work of transcendent catharsis & tragic emotional metamorphosis, from a phenomenal brilliant writer. After assimilating Ms. Lau's enthralling, somewhat beguiling stylism, one is simply left, torn asunder, as her spellbinding beautific word pictures are rendered in such astute & sultry erudition. Evelyn Lau's comprehensive body of work is entrancingly seductive. Hauntingly beautiful & adoit; Scintillating,yet melancholy.Enigmatic & stupefying.Ultimately, I am left dumbstruck. Her writing has an innate ability to create an obsession & infatuation that melts away any steel remnant of cold calculated logic men may attempt to employ toward women. The games over... On the meridian of art in written form, we find the pleatau of spirit; Immortal soul, eternal love...embodied within Evelyn Lau's art. Once you have read her work, your life absolutely, will never be the same again...
5.0 out of 5 stars
The New Ann Frank,
By "one_leaver" (CAN) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Runaway; Diary Of A Street Kid (Paperback)
Once you start this book, Evelyn becomes you. I had to just keep reading and reading...to finish it, desperate for a happy ending. It is the TRUE diary of a young girl - dabbling in prositution, drugs, therapy and homelessness. This book offers great insight in to the mind of a adolesent, and reminds one of a not so distant past of battling the same demons. Evelyn's world view is set to critique all that crosses her path...including our correctional services, family services, and basic social acceptability. Pretty smart for a 15 year old. Many wonderful thoughts, feelings and ideas can be gained from reading this book. I would recommend this book as required reading for youths who typically DON'T read. Its a great starting point and is sure to capture their attention. But nonetheless...a great story that in the end, any reader feels privilaged to have been on the journey.
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