My Long Journey to Bring My Daughter Home From Skid Row
After months of waiting for my runaway teen, Stephanie, to come back, I ventured into the grittiest part of San Francisco to search for her. What I found was more than I bargained for.
This Creative Nonfiction Classic, first published in our 16th issue with the headline, “Tenderloin: A Memoir,” is one of my personal CNF favorites. I immediately flashed back to it when, about a year after we published it, I saw Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream. I remembered Debra’s skill in capturing the same kind of grimness, hopelessness and darkness with just her words… She captures all those harsh realities in her telling of this futile trip, while smartly intimating other, unspoken questions. We know there is much more to this story. Her language evokes the sights, sounds, smells, the leaden weight of her experience in this milieu. And its lack of resolution is delicious.
—Patricia Park, co-founder of Creative Nonfiction magazine
The best the cop can do is take my daughter’s name and add her to a national database of runaways.
From across the counter in this dank San Francisco police station, he offers this, as if typing names of missing children ro…