Zoo Station, A Memoir, The Story of Christiane F - Book Review

People who are clean and sober wonder what the factors are that would draw a kid in their early teens into the drug scene. Poverty is the usual answer, and it’s true, but do we really know what poverty is? It isn’t just a lack of money, or the negligence of a child’s parents. It often takes root in the simple fact that a child may live in a building complex where there is no playground. Zoo Station, A Memoir (1978) is based on a series of articles in Stern magazine where the main interviewee is one teenager going by the name Christiane F. She methodically goes through her youth from the age of six to fourteen where abuse and deprivation molded her into a junkie and a prostitute. Her family came from a rural area in Germany. Christiane, her sister, and her mother were led to West Berlin by her father who boasted of a new opportunity of founding a telephone dating service. Christiane’s father rented a large apartment with promises of making...