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Evelyn Yee-Fun Lau was born in Vancouver on July 2, 1971 to Chinese immigrants. The parents were obsessively ambitious on behalf of their children (there is a younger sister), demanding constant top performance at school tests and expecting their eldest daughter, Evelyn, to become a medical doctor. When she reached the age of ten things got even worse as her father became unemployed and withdrew into emotional passivity - "... one of the most traumatic events in my childhood," Evelyn Lau later recalled. She had been closely attached to her father, her source of protection from the neurotic mother.
Writing was her means to psychological survival. Lau claims to have been conscious of her urge to become a writer since she was six. In 1983 (age 12) she began publishing poems and short stories in 'little magazines'.
Early in 1986 she ran away from her unbearable existence as a social outcast in school and a suppressed, unloved daughter at home. She took up the life of a drug abuser and prostitute in Vancouver - living mostly at social institutions and chronicling in a a diary her psychologically battered life and her struggle as an emerging writer. The manuscript became a bestseller when it was published in 1989 under the title Runaway. Diary of a Street Kid (when she was 18).
Generally considered a 'one shot' literary success, Lau nevertheless went on publishing two significant volumes of poetry: You Are Not Who You Claim (1990) and Oedipal Dreams (1992). Many of the poems are lightly edited versions of material previously published in magazines. They take up major themes of Runaway: prostitution and the search for a loving, caring father figure.
A collection of ten short stories, Fresh Girls & Other Stories (1993) established her as one of Canada's leading writers. It is her finest book so far, offering a haunting insight into the minds of young prostitutes and marginalised women, a theme also pursued by the volume of poetry entitled In the House of Slaves from 1994 (age 23). Also in 1994, Runaway was made into a 97 minutes tv-film entitled "The Diary of Evelyn Lau". The film is an abbreviated version of the book but stays faithful to its tone and spirit.
In 1995 Lau's first novel, Other Women, appeared, the story of a young woman's erotic obsession with an older, married man. Differing in content from the earlier works it still bears the soul-mark of Evelyn Lau's writing: poignancy and a sense of deep emotional disorientation, at once subtle and nightmarish. - Is she an 'Asian-American writer'? In principle yes, but it seldom shows in her texts. Lau's prose and poetry have a 'nowhere place' and 'no direction home' feel about it that may derive from her uprooted and dysfunctional family background but which first of all signifies a basic condition of the modern mind.
On her literary background, Evelyn Lau says this:
"I've been influenced by different writers at different stages of my writing life. As a pre-adolescent, I was most drawn to the work of L.M. Montgomery, Sylvia Plath, Ray Bradbury and Anaïs Nin (all very different writers, but I was drawn to their use of language and, in Bradbury's and Montgomery's case, their stories. I was also a huge fan of Gone With the Wind, which I read over and over). In my adult life I have most admired the work of John Updike and John Cheever, and I am particularly attracted to (often American) writing about marriages and extramarital relationships, and middle class/upper middle class family lives."
"Some of the books I love the most include: Light Years by James Salter; Marry Me by John Updike; the Rabbit books by John Updike; Lolita by Nabokov; short story collections V.S. Pritchett, A Fanatic Heart by Edna O'Brien; The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever; Something Happened by Joseph Heller ... The list could be endless; by mentioning a few books I am excluding so many others. It's impossible. If I were stuck on a desert island, though, I'd want to have in my possession either Updike's novels or Cheever's short stories."
How does an Evelyn Lau story come about?
"A short story of mine typically comes about in several stages. I keep notebooks where I keep a lot of story notes - observations, images, bits of dialogue and description, a paragraph here and there. Eventually - sometimes very soon, sometimes a while later - I will write the first draft of a story, usually in an intense, concentrated rush of a few weeks. Then, over a period of a few months, I will revise occasionally, as well as let it sit. Then I will revise the entire story (the first draft tends to be messy and only a small part of what the story eventually becomes). I will let it sit further, and periodically revise bits of it. Then I will write another whole draft. Sometimes this process ends here; sometimes it continues like that for several more drafts."
What changes does she see ahead for her writing?
"At the moment I don't have a clear idea of the future of my authorship, since there have been some significant changes in my life over the past few years and I find myself thinking about my work differently all the time. At present I am working on my fourth collection of poetry, and have a new book coming out in March 1999 (called *Choose Me*, with Doubleday. It's a collection of six short stories and a novella). I have always wanted to move from the 'margin' to the 'centre' in my writing; I want to train my powers of observation and imagery on more 'normal' lives than I have previously been able to chronicle. But the 'centre' has plenty of darkness itself, and I suppose I will always want to examine those shadows too. I find myself entirely fascinated by how people relate to each other, the things they reveal and the things they hide, their ambitions and disappointments, their struggle for love and their spurning of it."
The above profile has been written for Northwest Passages by Anders Blichfeldt. Born in 1952, Mr. Blichfeldt has a Master of Theology degree and works as an Editorial Secretary for the Dialog Center in Denmark. He has published several books, including one novel.
For information on how you can write an author profile, visit our contributions page, or e-mail us at nwp@mwsolutions.com
| Runaway - Diary of a Street Kid |
$ 18.95 | BUY |
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| Fresh Girls and Other Stories |
$ 15.95 | BUY |
| Choose Me |
$ 17.95 | BUY |
| Inside Out - Reflections on a life so far |
$ 17.95 | BUY |
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