Diary of a Street Kid Summary

This book is a true story about a girl named Evelyn Lau that kept a journal of her life and what she did in her 2 year experience as a young Chinese Canadian woman. She left home because she could no longer stand her parents’ oppression of her desires to write poetry. Her parents thought she needed to do something more with her life but she didn't. Her running away from home helped her to have a successful career as a young writer.

Her book starts off by starting 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 self 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 book I became aware of her extremely low self-esteem and her self-loathing, which her parents’ perfectionist behavior has instilled in her. She can't seem to be able 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, 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. 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.

In my opinion I found that 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.

Comaprison from two books:
-Both give story of teenagers struggling through life on their own trying to find themselves.
Both writers.
-In the end of both books you see that even though at first you thought they were going to be in trouble in the end they end up happy and have made it through a big turning stage in their lives.

Summary of White Olenader:

I found this book to be really good and entertaining. for my reasearch paper I plan tohave my thesis about life exoeriences as in White Oleander the sutcases symbolized the different adventures she had and the things she learned at each new place she stayed at.

Everything in this book was about life experiences, love, finding yourself and learning that you can always learn something new at each new place you live. The next book I read is Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid.

This book I found was very similar to White Oleander as their was many of the same concepts that I saw in White Oleander.

Summary: Of Runaway: Diary of a Street Kid to come.