Runaway by Evelyn Lau
"Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid" by Evelyn Lau is an autobiographical account detailing her experiences as a young Chinese Canadian woman who ran away from home to escape the oppressive expectations of her parents. The narrative begins on March 22, 1988, marking the first day of her new life after leaving home, as she navigates the challenges of homelessness, mental health struggles, and the pursuit of her passion for writing. Lau's journey includes a harrowing attempt at suicide and subsequent recovery in a mental hospital, where she encounters a social safety net designed to support troubled youth.
Throughout her story, Lau grapples with low self-esteem and self-destructive behaviors, including drug use and relationships with unsuitable partners, which are compounded by her parents' perfectionism. Despite these struggles, she finds solace and strength in her writing, which becomes a pivotal part of her identity and a source of recognition through awards and acceptance letters. The narrative does not provide a neat resolution; instead, it captures a moment in Lau's life where she begins to emerge from her darkest times, hinting at a hopeful future as she prepares for college and reflects on her tumultuous journey. Lau's story is a poignant exploration of resilience, identity, and the complexities of adolescence, resonating with those who seek to understand the challenges faced by young people in similar circumstances.
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Subject Terms
Runaway by Evelyn Lau
First published: 1989; 1995 (with a new epilogue)
The Work
Based on the journals that Evelyn Lau kept, Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid chronicles her two-year experience as a young Chinese Canadian woman who left home because she could no longer stand her parents’ oppression of her desires to write poetry. She sought to be anything but an obsessively studious, meekly obedient model pupil. Runaway became Lau’s start in a successful career as a young writer.
After telling of her terrible life at home in a prologue, Lau’s autobiography opens on the first day after she ran away from home: March 22, 1988. Staying with friends at first, she attempts suicide on the day she is turned in to the authorities. Recovering at a mental hospital, Lau falls into Canada’s well-developed social safety net designed to rescue troubled teenagers.
For months, Lau tries to put distance between her old and new selves as she self-destructively experiments with drugs and sex. Twice she goes to the United States only to turn herself in to be shipped back home to Vancouver. She frustrates social workers and her two psychiatrists, who are unable to prevent her descent into teenage prostitution and drug abuse.
Throughout the chronicle of Lau’s ordeal, the reader becomes aware of her extremely low self-esteem and her self-loathing, which her parents’ perfectionist behavior has instilled in her. The reader almost cries out in despair at Lau’s inability to value herself, even as her budding career as a writer begins with awards and letters of acceptance for her poetry.
Despite her ability to keep up with her writing and her occasionally seeing her position with lucidity, Lau refuses to stop hurting herself. She becomes attached to unsuitable men such as Larry, a drug addict on a government-sponsored recovery program, which he abuses with cunning. To keep Lau, Larry provides her the potent pharmaceuticals without which she could not abide his presence.
In the end, Lau frees herself of Larry, lives on her own in a state-provided apartment, and readies herself for college. Her writing has sustained her through dark hours, and, at sixteen, she is only a short time away from turning the journals into a manuscript. Runaway does not have a real closure. The reader leaves Lau as she seems to have overcome the worst of her self-abusive behavior, yet her life is still a puzzle waiting to be sorted out completely. In the epilogue added in 1995, Lau provides a firm sense that she has found a way out of the crisis of her adolescent life.
Bibliography
Books in Canada. Review of Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid, by Evelyn Lau. January, 1990, 23.
James, Darlene. Review of Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid, by Evelyn Lau. Maclean’s, November 13, 1989, 81.