An hour with Jeannette Walls

i know can be stranger than fiction and perhaps nowhere is that more apparent than in the glass castle a real life a memoir that in outlaw ways i'm kate mcintyre and today on tv are present now lost who grew up in extreme poverty in america from the desert southwest to the coal mines of west virginia race by an eccentric alcoholic father and a free spirit mother who was more interested in pursuing art and feeding her children walls powerful rag to riches memoir tells how she escaped the poverty of her childhood graduated from an elite college with honors went on to become a successful journalist and for years the story of her family now that story the glass castle is a critically acclaimed best seller that has inspired and opened the eyes of millions jeannette walls comes to us today as part of the humanities lecture series sponsored by the hall center for the

humanities at the university of kansas and now here is that i think it's so much they've faced is this is quite an honor quite enjoys him used this season scientist and compete with a basketball game so i am i am overwhelmed i mean i'm very humbled it is a chilling and an honor for me to be standing up here in front of you today which is pretty ironic because for a really long time my story was a source of shame for me our monies to write about celebrities for a living that's not the source of st francis it be but it's not the time one time i was dressed in fabulous designer clothes and going to some fabulous party and in the taxi was stuck in traffic a couple blocks away from the party where it's heading and i glanced out the window and i saw a homeless woman reading to the trash and to most new yorkers to just look like your average run of the mill homeless woman

but when i got a good look at her i realized it was my mother and the emotion that sees me at that moment i never great to say was not one of lover even compassionate was one of fear because i was afraid mama look up and see me and then she would call out my name and somebody was going to the same fabulous party that was going to be here and to my secret would be out a factor was living on park avenue and writing about celebrities my mother was living on the streets so to my eternal regret i slid down in the back of the tax in as the driver to take me home once i got there i paced around the apartment a little bit and i glanced in the mirror and didn't much like the person i saw their struck me as quite a hypocrite i got to get my mother a couple of days later i said mom what on earth am i supposed to tell people when they ask me about you and she looked at me as though i just answer the dumbest question in the world and he said tell the truth isn't that simple enough to just tell the truth but that seemed impossible to me how could it ever explain to people why my mother was an

intelligent and resourceful woman would be living on the streets but moreover what kind of a monster of a daughter would live on park avenue and write about celebrities while i let my mother lived like that but at the same time i think it was something that i had to do it i feel like a fraud and a felony and there was no doubt in my mind though that once people knew the truth about me that i was going to lose everything i was completely convinced that could be fired from my job would lose all my friends and keep would run for the exits as soon as i came into a room and i felt that it was something that i had to do an edge and so i sat down and i confronted my my truth my past and my earliest memory of my earliest memories of cooking hotdogs for myself when i was three years old as many of you know read my story my mother was an artist and she never much cared for household chores she felt why should i spend a couple hours cooking it didn't work it's been the same in a time doing a painting at the beauty that will last forever so we can sort of left to fend for ourselves sometimes those cooking hotdogs of my dress caught on fire and going to the hospital and the thing i

remember the most about the host what was clean and and there was always food in addition to run out of food or even ice and the changes she's even when they were at their dirty and then at about six weeks in the hospital my father rescue committee he scooped me up in his arms and he ran off without the nurses and the doctors running after us congress to stop of the day and he jumped into a waiting car and sped off he called it to be listed as though we were always doing just get after we were always running from something dad's it was the mafia the cia mom said colleges the bill collectors but whoever was there always chasing us if we were always running and we were writing it away from people we were chasing something or chase my father's trains see dad told me that one of these days you sell a business running away in and sleep in carson city in cardboard boxes that was all tempered one of these days he was going to build first a great big mansion out of the desert he called the glass castle all they had to do was find gold and then you build

is our glass castle well at the halls of a few other things got in the way and we didn't move into a little tent so that was fidgeting with these got really tough if we didn't have indoor plumbing they didn't have heat week we had electricity the housewives like to say that we didn't use that pay the bills that was easily off on but if my parents taught me one thing was how to do this get out or so when i was seventeen years old i went to newark city carved out a life for my own and i thought i had made it skip my past you know why i thought i'd i reinvented myself that you know past has a way of catching up with you and i was getting ready for school when they heard about some crazy rag on the fdr drive and and that get broken down and the contents of spilled out in the dog was playing keep away with a cop so might like my stomach city sees that because it was a crazy certificate was always happy when i grow up that poor family i get a call later on in the day was for my mom she said you know you can do your work as a manager game breakdown fdr drive it you know cows on the radio

this morning a hand to see that there was great as it has continued to be already be famous i didn't dig yourself addison that i told point blank please don't tell anybody related to me i finally have a normal life i finally unify not the daughter of the crazy people on my own i paid the bills electricity is on the cops are chasing us all my only present related to me but then i saw on the street that divides i felt i had to i had to just have come clean but as i'm sitting down to write my story trying to rise to my mother's challenge to just tell the truth about me doing this and i've got this great job michael on television i might name sinner in magazines and on the newspapers and online and i am i live in a house of the last one that will market anybody was somewhat like why am i exposing myself to this what was certain was going to be a humiliation and shame and degradation and for a while and i think the if i could

make one person understand one but i use of coal rich kid an easter with a little chip on my shoulder a rich kid understand what it's like to grow up or i can get one person to understand what it's like to grow up in this weird combination of shame and pride about who and what you are one person to stand or whatever shame and humiliation and embarrassment about to go through will be worth it and then as i'm working a little longer in the book i developed than even fonder hope of thunder hope for it and that was that somebody who grew up like me would read it somebody you grew up you know worried a little bit about where the next meal was gonna come from the worried a little bit about where that if they could pay the rent and may be something we get a single ember of hope to read my story that i got from a tree grows in brooklyn i think you know if she made it maybe i can too well i have been stunned and overwhelmed by people's reactions to my story as i say i thought that i thought people would would not understand that would not get it

the telling of my store has transformed the world from evil place to a potential enemies to afford a place there were potential friends because people have been so good and so smart that i was completely unprepared and i'd like to share with you some of the reactions have to revisit some of the things that i have learned from people and one of the things i've learned is when a knuckle head i was thinking that people wouldn't get it but not long after the publication of the book and of itself but i never felt like i'm bragging it's designed but not long after the publication of the book from a very attractive young blonde girl came up to me she was as a kid says it's fifteen years old and she said she read my story was his vacation in the caribbean and i know and she said you know she's a business girl in my class interest comes to the school in in these nasty out of date clothes and scott his greasy hair and we all make fun of her and knowing the state and i will never make fun of her allure to strike me down with lightning right now i have done my job on this flat i've made that one person and a stand and then not long

after that the teacher told me that she'd signed a book in and it really so tough tough area in northern alabama and one of one of her students came up to her and he said not only like books and i like remember like this book as usual what is about this particular story she said that you don't like books i said i don't that this was acceptable what is it about this one and he thinks for a second he said you know i think it's because some this here is a fine white trash story spanning the teacher added very quickly add a little bit nervously as a compliment but i took it as a compliment in fact i think it is perhaps the greatest compliment that i've ever received because of the young man who considers himself to be trash can hear my story and think you know something she's not that different from me and that ever popular girl vacations in the caribbean can hear my story and say hey you know something she's not that different from a sunni that's what the beauty of reading

and writing especially memoirs are i think i mean there was a bit of a on rapper all exhibitionist and eager to show you all of our scars but it's not about that it's you know it's i think if we succeed on any level is getting past the stereotypes so many of us are wracked not only about about the us but about ourselves you know i think a lot of us we might look different we might face different challenges have different circumstances but you don't know which would be like if your circumstances were different and in effect anything i hope that i encourage people to look beyond the stereotypes that to help people understand you know when you see that homeless woman you don't know the whole story and when you see the gossip columnist you don't know the whole story either and i think maybe with yourselves as well to look at your own stories you know each of us has a story and each of us has a truth and getting at that truth is sometimes a great challenge and it was for me when i sat down and tried to tell the truth one of the things i had to figure out his or what is the truth you know so it was much smarter than me once

said the truth is a liquid and not a solid and it takes many shapes you get any of my siblings had written this book it would be very different and and it's sitting down and confronting mounted i had to i had to ask myself well whose truth am i trying to find my theory fondest memory for my entire childhood is when i was five years old we had no money for christmas presents and whenever like believe in santa claus because we hear about presents on christmas on and my parents didn't want us to think that we weren't as good as the other kids who got big fancy a presence on christmas so they really got it that they owned and on this particular christmas was five years of my father to each of his children out into the desert night annie has look up at the sky and as a christmas present the latest shoes whatever star in the sky we wanted it was the brightest one which was venus data to explain to me the venus wasn't start all it's just a planet it was so bright is the summit's closer i wanted anyway guess at what the heck it's christmas you won a planet you

got a plan and he gave me being us and i treasure i treasure that gift to this day when i see the visit the misguided as money out of man i treasure not only the gift of a treasure that story so much that so much so that when my father died i told that story his funeral and everything is telling a story my sister laurie was a couple years older than me and always has been so much smarter than me you know it's all right to my dad's be as she said matt like that's r e s o b data far as he goes and gives away some that didn't belong to him in the first place and you know the thing about that comment is lori's actually write getting media this was a completely meaningless gesture but i'm right to it was a priceless treasure you know it is what if you choose to make of it and i think the same could be said of the glass castle itself into dadaab is it ever a good bill was that plants that glass castle i've come to believe that he made he gave us

something more valuable in and in talking and dreaming about it it gave me the hope and the belief that maybe all of this moving around a sleeping in cars of that was temporary but there i was one of these days maybe going to have something better than that i hope that i've also learned some of the things that probably should've learned a long time ago when i was about four years old i thought i'd hurt monster a monster into my bed and about eight and so old enough to know that there was no such thing as monsters but i still think i've heard something i went out to my dad as i think as a monster into my bed and the truth is i have expected say honey is no such thing as monsters go back to sleep but the truth is i would've been scared still but instead that said there was it out what good looking creature with each medal long sharp teeth as it may be their sit in these nasty looking yellow eyes i think yeah i think so yeah that sounds like him and gets it on its own because they're still be demonized implement its language religion and i think

that that seems like an o s o b team and you know old demons to chase me for years but now because he realizes that wrecks walls don't scare too easy so he's gone after much it's let's go get him said they get sad or something it gives me the pipe or intimate look under the bed no demon we go chasing after working with a wiggle out into the desert night live in the garbage cans and look at the sagebrush dead person of the blue streak and get listening to things and with much average ramp that scare you know demons three dances and i mean it's just like an old demon he's a bully and like most police he's just a coward and he gets is jolly scaring people then you got to do with no demon is you look him in the eye and you let him know you not afraid he turns tail and runs well but that was trying to tell me of course was to face my fears and of us consider myself to be a somewhat brave person i'm not afraid of snakes are the dark or anything like that but it's taken me all this time to understand that for all these years my demon was myself

it was my own past and i've also come to understand that the devil's right you look at old demon in the it really really can't hurt you any fear is lucky as i am you can put a harness on eugene them and put it to work for you some people's reactions to my story are wildly differing views of people think that my parents were monsters of both think that they are certainly flawed characters but that they had to guess and he passes gets along to their children in it as such a light and i'm fascinated by people's reactions to my story it's really not about about me it's about the readers and i will confess i i have looked at amazon reviews once or twice a day but i'm i know i'm driven by then i ran into that that particular one that because i'm already read editors about knocked my socks off remember this woman i remember about it and she said is as was made here that she she was regretted the way she treated me to she could look me up to apologize to me so

needless to say i looked her up and it wasn't that hard and i can honestly say that i wasn't looking for an apology i wasn't calling to say you know you were meetings congress a no apologies necessary you know i remember how tough those teen years can be as i did before writing my story certainly did afterwards how how they want nothing more than to be well to fit and i mean i wasn't even hoping to be popular doesn't wanna be teased but you know it's it's you just want to be like you when i have friends at the pure precious awful and something comes along who is lower than you on the totem pole it's awfully difficult to resist that impulse to put that person down in the mistaken belief that putting somebody else down is going to make you feel better about yourself unite all becky that if the roles have been reversed and i've been the popular one and she come alongside like we come along i don't know if i would've had the moral courage to have defended much less befriended somebody like me but he kept on the city it's just always haunted me to nancy said you know i did the wrong thing and om

i resented him embarrass it comes to house disabled people think of the battle of that that you know you know as a little bit of a demon for becky your nasty demon little tiny demon hike in a corset you said because i guess you don't even in the eye and she let him know what was what she you know she was living person and i think that that's one of the challenges we all have of like you know we all have things in our past that we're not crazy about things that were done to us or we're done for us or maybe even things that we did that were not terribly proud of and i think one of the challenges that we all have is does not regret those things or to do better or upset about those things you know the thing about bitterness is it that it didn't get anywhere and so it doesn't hurt the person you're better with that it eats you up inside that is to take these things that have happened to all of us and put them to work force determined to our advantage you know i think that everything in life that everything in life is both a blessing and a curse and it's entirely up to us which one we

choose to focus on i honestly believe i honestly believe that those of us who face real challenges in a life are added advantage over those who haven't it does especially conclusion i've come to well before the publication of my book and i was working in your magazine at the time was a sort of snooty place literally look down a nosy you if you went to a public schools i kept real quiet about my past but this one and befriended me she's incredibly wealthy should got a fancy boarding schools and stuff like that and she wanted me to go with her on an outward bound expeditions now i had never heard it is albert that is unsettling to some young was the moment i had no idea that we're down to so i asked her about it she starts telling me you pay all this money people out into the wilderness a voice for flute and says tell me about learning to build fires and that you can survive and i don't want to say anything but i think in the first seventeen years of my life for now we're down to know i call them my brothers

you're not going to believe this is the rich people got a paper there are not that of the who may have that the more i got to know this woman the more it actually made sense to me because this woman is incredibly intelligent resourceful woman and there is no doubt in my mind that she could do what ever she sets out to do but she doesn't know that because her parents in an effort to take away the obstacles are no life also took away the gift that we all get from learning to navigate those obstacles and i do believe that's a blessing i i honestly didn't know that you could survive pretty much whatever life throws at you which isn't to say that you're from time to time we all need a little help and it you know sometimes we ought to be pulled up a little bit but i think that if you if you've gone without there are many blessings and that i would never take anything in life for granted you know i have a thermostat a terminal

thing up in the morning while it gets warm i never go into a grocery store without thinking i can buy anything in this grocery store i want to i don't have to go to the clerk asked them if they could have the bananas are about to throw away i can buy this series you have their onset not on sale to start at five dollars and life is a series of wonderful blessings and that's a wonderful it which is not to say that i don't cherish my luxuries i absolute havoc wait life now but i also know that i could lose it all and i'll still be falling i know the difference between wanting things nd things and that's a that's a really freeing thing to know which isn't to say that i don't have the baggage from my past of course i do have issues and i always will the first time as the tragedy of the play deals lost his hand i forget myself for that and you know growing up effects house lucky you you'll have it's a choice in it's very easy to go in either direction it is a choice but sometimes i believe that i have some

advantages of people who who grew up maybe with even more than i did because i like i never doubted that my parents left us when he has admitted i did have a whole lot of friends when i was growing up my brother had some an inhibited bar has from time to time and there's one particular member who was his best friend a monocle and sam invited ice to sell sometimes away to sam's house the scene was a good kid we stopped at his house one morning a particular member and sam's mama's making breakfast on the coal stove and i'm looking around thinking wow they gotta go me now i'm asking for a whole lot but they got heat mcguffin and i could be happy like this saying was sitting at the kitchen table he was drawing a picture of a horse is actually quite talented artist limited be giving a couple lessons spike in sales father came downstairs look to what he was doing and smacked him upside the head to putting on airs and the key was an artist thinking about marching on the lucky one here might not have food might not have heat

like hers would never make fun of my dreams not long after the book came out a murder that i went back to to west virginia back to the town i grew up in welsh primetime so alive to the segment on the book we ran into sam i would've recognized to be said a tough life has changed a lot of the bright spot it right away with saying bryan and ran up and it does dye her family they didn't have too much is this is alissa probably went to visit and a cop says a look at all as an affair and they compare their arrests in iran and bryan tell me after his has since really happy that we both basically went into the same industry and you know the truth is it sort of broke my heart because that scene was such good kid he really was and the biggest difference between brian and sam wears set for all syrians live anybody was telling me is a barricaded and for our prize like there's at least one person there saying that he there's a

good kid in that he'd make it through and so that's you know that's why i'm not bitter not angry or unhappy you know i live in a house right now with four flush toilets what would seem to be unhappy about its painted yellow fat back up the bottom you know i i have a great life and an icon i'm overjoyed with it that the one thing that i think was really missing from my life is that i didn't feel connected to the human race i thought there was different it was a self imposed isolation which is what changes do you isolate yourself you think you're different from other people and i was trying to buy my self esteem i think but what if there was better than other people i thought you know and wearing all his designer clothes at this fabulous job does it feel to success right is it better but there's still something missing so either living in europe for a couple years people into theaters restaurants and stuff like that i decided to go back to work to try to prove to the old hits a treat me bad for the night i made it i was i was somebody's now right so as i went back to the restaurant or maybe the fanciest restaurants in tehran i was good show them that i'm having a restaurant so go back to this wouldn't be a

very fancy restaurant was a coffee shop but related which it got so i sit down and the waitress comes out she can see the menu and i'm looking at it and says you know i'm special today fish and calm and i'd learned from having lived in new york city that toward the special status as a soda sophisticated and we're so because consensus it can i help you and if you looked like a lovely woman who maybe didn't have the easiest life in the world and i was i was trying to do something to my sources and it has what is the fish are you know civic services it skews i was being a jerk again with the fish was it was like a little square pieces of crimes on a canal is this takes basically and i wasn't lovely chilean sea bass on it and i was trying to force her to humiliate herself to say you know it's just basically sticks to feel better about myself so but yes the menu says phillips what is the fares says she looks around to see if anybody else had heard what i just asked he said

that this is an animal with swells in the water and it was a very valuable lesson for me not to try to prove that you're better than anybody that i failed miserably at it see probably distilled certain about that noble head from the cd you don't know what they had their faces if i've succeeded all i would've succeeded in doing is making her feel bad about herself in and it's taking over some to understand that that's not how we feel better about ourselves is to understand how much we have in common and i sat down with this woman and you know had a chat with bright she would probably would've become a friend of mine and an eye i think that that that is what people such as yourself have taught me and you know it has been a long journey i think i've learned a lot but in the whole process of it but it hasn't always been easy because all the decision to write about i suppose always easy because you know in making the decision to tell your story you also tell about the people you care about your your loved ones or family members and i i'd be out of touch with my kid sister

second of her permission to read that i had my my brother my older sister's permission i was very nervous about what to say about my mother do you know a lot people have cut my dad a little slack because he was alcoholic i can tell you the people have said you know your dad near the pool hall seen your mom had me until the chocolate city and it was it's hard to see it as if you have read my story or were more familiar with it there was one episode where where the kids were hungry and my mother has chocolate stashed away tuck a holiday gift but nobody else does that just because they didn't get it if you don't you don't teach your children that way you feed your kids i don't care how well how poor you are two you don't eat what you deny your kids' coats i really i really grappled with whether or not to include that scene you know because it was a choice of mine even though it's nonfiction you make the choice of what truth you choose to present i could easily left that story out as you would be more sympathetic and nobody would've looked and say hey there's a pothole here what other chocolate you know so that was the decision on my

part to tell that aspect of my mother om it was something that i decided i needed to do because that's the episode actually happen on a number of occasions i was feeling when i included it was very revealing about her personality and was also revealing about why have made certain decisions that i made so after a lot of soul searching i would have included that i offer to show the book to my mother before publication she had no interest in reading it she was the middle of an interesting sacred thing great books at the pass that is he made only after became a bestseller to read it at my my older sister laurie's urging for and um i braced myself to what you're saying about what i'd like written about chocolate see but she never mentioned just curious about my description of her driving other format system for a great about it and she did say i never gambled i said mama to gamble and he suggested she wrote which are followed i would disappear all by two casino people who are a bit better but i think it was gay but i was in gambling i was just like make sure your father didn't gamble the money way then i realize it's a seven year old child that's what must have looked like and you had to

write the truth as he saw a model that's pretty dane fabulous about all the things i wrote about mom she understands that i had to tell the truth as i saw a male readers who tend to be smarter than you pointed out you think your mom would be concerned with what people think of her leaving your kids alone overnight but that's his mom as she focuses on and i i i am i am i am grateful that she's accepted the story and he's actually been quite fragile she'll be promoted she went on prime time live in any by any fair and entertainment weekly she went on oprah with me that was a hoot see an oprah tickets at a chicago because of the riots that was huang had a grand time there's issues at the time she was living in an abandoned building for i was going to monitor really nice restaurant eating before but the flight was late so i called the real message mr flights to lay it just order room service i'm on set or to look at them at these countries thirty eight dollars i could never order a thirty eight dollars on tree should only oprah could afford it so security three of them

so we're doing it in the show the next day and i have to say it's it is the tight security is any show i've ever been and i think that they found them all but perhaps go through these metal detectors and padded assault down and they open up our handbags reopen of mom's hand they collect is typical sirloin steak and it's less than a man to stand here and say that they're completely come to terms with mercifully still entirely capable of embarrassingly and over is playing the young they got a little tape he's a little voiceover was was assumed by this time to its eccentric mother had become homeless visit the word eccentric and an on site me and as we're walking out and leaving mom says to me in a rather loud voice gm's ever homeless and is a pivotal james fry cutter christmas or what its name aa talk about this latest but i was homeless i said mom you lived under the george

washington bridge for six weeks right that was my you know and and you know it's a bad attitude about my mother that i find both in theory and maddening you know she's the most optimistic person on the planet isn't it was aces and denial she would deny that but that's the sea is capable of seeing the positive than anything the extent i think that sometimes you know she was capable of not seeing what was going on with the us and is a survival tool for her and any writing about myself i had not only strip away my own defenses i had a strip away hers as well so i am set of applaud the fact that she was able to look at it and still cut me some slack over you know one time i was saying to me i was i was frustrated with where her life is going on as i made a list of things she needed to do this is what i do when i get messages and make less money to do this and this and this has a genetic jury too much she said things usually work out in the end as if you know

what if they doubt she said that just means you haven't reached the end yet and i think it is yet it's a gift of my father gave me the gift of dreaming my mother gave me the gift of optimism i think some of these gifts have to be taken only infiltrating pizza sometimes but that they are still a gift if you choose to receive them mom being mom has been living in and that this abandoned building for like is it like fifteen years without heat without running water only with whatever electricity they could still from new york city and caught on fire a couple years ago and my mother who's currently seventy four years old down to sell on the streets again and bomb you know i i i live in virginia now i i don't live in your city more about a great big old place and we had a place out back when we put on here is we call it the final cottage that is a mobile home but it still has you know it still has running water and he and toothless toilets and marked down here live witnesses say

many of the most exciting city in the world i don't want to go again live in virginia that's the stakes get on your money live on the streets we have you we have running water contamination i'm not some charity case i'm not much or another depend on my sister my sister might my daughter my son in law for that take her make a message in a moment the key to getting horses and could really use the help she's ugly right there so mom is living with us and my brother by snake assistant to the letter and your life has been a brain that craziness of that have taken that that chaos that they always lived with and just as the knesset life again and you know i have to say it has been an absolute delight having her there at a cheese if anybody there anybody out there feels that she's a bad mom i completely condone your opinion my brother would agree with you it's it's all american but i think she's a hoot it says a lot of her debut at a specific knowledge ever to take care of uses a lot of fun and she's actually you know i think she's taught me a lot he's taught me a lot

since having moved down there would have a visitor there like as i called her afterwards just so elated about some things you just really excited over the vote as if you know we could move mom says it's the most wonderful thing happened today isn't what caesar i fell off the horse and you know my mother is very talented horsewoman on horses i know where she fell off he's a big guy like my it was in her father has been singed up the horse ameche it is not quite as happy about having her as i thought it was but it wasn't even her fall into that she felt that she was just still a really good mood about it as a mommy how would even you put a positive spin on that we could possibly be good about falling off a horse you so today big silly she said anybody can ride a horse it's knowing how to fall that's really important and i think there's a great deal of wisdom and that it really do you now anybody can write it during the good times anybody can enjoy themselves when things are going well it does take great talent you know the bill as it was four really lucky we know had a fall and those of us who are truly truly lucky you know have the

resources for whatever reason to be able to give them those who've fallen a little bit of a hand and help them up as a city that is trying to turn the story is it has changed the way i see the world the way i see myself because i never thought of myself as a benevolent person that you wanted to help other people what i found is in that helping excuse the airport's been helping other people what we help ourselves and that's one of the things i've come to understand it later we became involved the man who became my current husband thomas davis became of all the night i thought he would understand he's you know he's in his dad's a diplomat he went to fancy boarding school he went to our pound ok so there's just no way he was going to understand me and it really started getting a little bit of golf with each other and i want to warn him about the past here and now john isn't easy to know about me he said well such as support when i was three years old and i got in this big by your microscope fired how to go to the hospital had all these skin grafts he said would you try to tell me here

as a blanket that these enhanced scars he's telling me this as well but what about a pig in a poke it on so damaged goods here any secure part sick i don't ever apologize for your scars he's at the stars are a sign that you survived and that she was stronger than whatever was to try to hurt you i said geez i wish it was nice and smooth like a creepy olson johnson oh no no smooth is boring you've got texture texture is interesting i i i thought that that was perhaps the wisest thing that anybody ever told me a while back and the sentiments of that i thought was even wiser and that i i'd like to share it because it really has changed the way i see the world i told that story one time about wanting to be smooth like of appeals very elegant crowd and afterwards it dishonestly sophisticated well dressed woman came up to chavez build dams on our hands and he said sweetie there is no such thing as smooth

as he said you look close enough silks got texture so so that's my message to you will you know we all have our text it will have our stories we all have our scars we all have our texture and some of us are lucky enough to have the silky texture and some of us are lucky enough to have texture that's a little bit rougher but whatever your texture just don't make the same mistake that i'm a facility years and think that that texture makes you or anybody else less of a person thank you very much fabian at fill my questions please don't worry about embarrassingly easy to tell him very near impossible to embarrass and anna revisit us very good question so if you know one

time i asked them personally as the visit was your mother leaves less leave what your family leave phoenix i don't completely understand as i i don't know we've been i've been a good answer for my mom and whenever i ask is she eats all squishy and and so i don't know the answer to that city the audience raise their hand just i know i think you do yeah my book of disgusted so a really great answer so if i don't know the answer to be somebody else does it for being here your siblings and you i guess one of the things that i got from the book is the challenge of trusting others in developing those meaningful relationships over time and i guess you could tell phil about their siblings and how they've evolved and they're understanding your child their childhoods and also in russia two years well it all works in progress i think that my and my sister gloria is as if she says but still is still an artist she still an enhanced is very talented you know none of us learned as girls have children and i think that that's not

a coincidence either something called parent to children and that means if you take on a lot of responsibilities as a childless climbed to want as adult responsibilities i have my husband has has kids like i share this with him but it is i think we all have issues i think that my kid sister one of the many blessings a tapestry sell them because of re establish contact with her she summons she still in california she hasn't set the world on fire with rare but that's ok she's living in a clean safe place she has a standing invitation to come live at my husband and me in and the pilot caught in a way play where he says you never once delivered scold over again and i keep telling you more in the cold lots abandoned at a thermostat just knew that at all things anc says he knows he still sees them where it says that and are taking upon offer but i asked him to understand that that's going to be her decision about what my book is that ulysses the tartan the police force he is no longer picks but the gestapo he is he's a ninth grade english teacher and i could not be more proud of him i'm a big fan of education it

i think applied every educator here i think that education is the great equalizer my brothers are that having children actually made it less sympathetic to mom and dad because i would come up my legs and spit roasted before i let my children go hungry these are becoming a teacher leighton appreciate mom and dad more he's he's teaching in a very tough area in brooklyn the city's stunned by some of the things that these kids were not driven by their parents he's dismayed appreciate it we were all reading before i can remember and enters the fact that we took on that system for granted as well as the emotional you know it and whatever whatever craziness my parents did they think they did give this emotional support ideally also get fairly close to pakistan but you know i think that all of us have a little difficulty learning to trust other people i think that one of the as i said i think that everything in life is both a blessing and a curse i think one of the blessings of having a child like it does them a scrapper and a fighter one of the curses he's on the scrapper a fighter edited me a long time to understand that a certain point in life it's ok to

take off the arm or to stop fighting and you know as a little little scary at first a lot more vulnerable but also lot lighter shipmates the questions now it's a definition of forgiveness in compassion and how do you apply them in your life my goodness look great question are you know you just you choose that word forgiveness and because i'm not even that i don't know people use is that without it i'm not a fan of that particular word because timmy forgiveness but he was ahead would you forgive your parents i never had to forgive but the percentage of the givers myself i think a lot of us who've pulled ourselves up by the boot straps have a little survivor's guilt and you're only reading back my own book i cut myself a little bit of slack to see myself in other people's eyes and say ok i understand why she didn't think she did but by a lab i'm not a fan of but the word forgiveness with other people is because that suggests victimization and i don't i don't consider myself to be a victim of what happened is that over with and damaged know maybe i've just inherited my mother's capacity for denial

i'm very happy with my life so for me it's it's less a matter of forgiveness and more of one of acceptance and buy acceptance i am i don't need approval i mean accepting that that's what somebody else's but also about my fondest memory of getting of starlight my conscious memory was that was the one the professor moriarty mentioned that my father used to be the pool hall swindling some some folks and you know that was the summer that my mother left me in charge of the household and was absolutely convinced that i could be a better wall that my mother had been i was the straight now my dad i think it would start drinking i was to put our household on a budget pay our bills they began early to see back on and within a couple weeks i was giving dead beer money and i had to do it i had to accept the fact that you know but i couldn't change my father's much i loved him i believe he loved me he was a damaged man and i couldn't undo the damage and as much

as i love him and believe he loved me and he was a good deal it cost hassle and if anybody was going to do that was to have to beat the band and so even though it's the worst experience of my life was also one of the best because again it a kick in the behind that i needed to turn to get a plan to get out and so i think that that everything everything horrible happens to us has a valuable gift wrapped inside if we are willing to receive that get so i think that that's morally the issue of a forgiveness a compassionate understanding that these people have issues and they treat you badly or don't give you the life that they want it's not about you it's about there the fact that they've got damage and baggage themselves and that you can't do anything about that you can easily wants to change could help them change that you can't change somebody's and i'm just taking responsibility for yourself and wishing the best for somebody else and helping them if they if they're willing to receive the help but understand that like we all have our stories and that's one of the challenges i don't know if a buddy of yours is

thinking of writing a memoir as it i cannot urge you to strongly that even if it's not something that you want to seller or even showed anybody else i found it hugely cathartic because i think that the whole process of driving is the process i'm thinking in you can find your past you confront your troops and it we'll have we'll know things that we don't think we know in these patterns emerging they'll have pieces of the puzzle floating around in our head and you you reach out and put them all in order a pattern emerges and i think that that's part of the process is understanding everybody story it's so it's not feeling sorry for yourself a certain way and say i forgive you think just understanding what this is that person's limitations they did what they could to mom did what she could do because she is who she is are my brother got together with my mother one time to try to get her to apologize for that we were raised in a depressed market happened is i can happen in a really tough long conversation and they both left are very

sad and frustrated and you know it i love having around sit like at the bartenders it's disturbing and down you know i care a great deal about the woman counting bobby's a little tongue in cheek but if she died ten years ago i don't ever cried as his very dear to me now because the fed and i'm not trying to get him to be somebody that celebrity you know she's not she hasn't at me that's what it is is that accepting somebody for what they are questions but i just it was going under ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha's just one point you said that your siblings written a memoir would have in a different new ideas will therefore how they have to respond to your book your stories are they accepting over an end to the disagreement your interpretation of a single so then i wrote that might you know i am

officer the one who are the starry eyed both literally and figuratively so they they might see things a little bit differently debate not disputed a single thing in the book oh my sister you want one point you say to my brother that's my story to a rise of no it's not it's your stories differently that was the same so it would've been a very different story if they would have if they would have written it but you are you my brother the cop the former cop is very compassionate that it does tend to see things more black and white that night to hit earth is right wrong and not a whole lot of gray area so i think it would've been a lot more like that but they weren't now not all shockingly in fact i've had almost no negative response that had a couple people challenging the book say that couldn't possibly happen but luckily people come on to amazon so yeah i did this and a couple people who do think that i am not aware how

mentally ill my parents i'd been asked before as if my mother was mentally ill and had ever been diagnosed as mentally ill and when asked a question like actually quote of amazon if you weren't time and rosy and then rosie o'donnell into a big a big fight about mom you know i like them both enjoy hated my mother she's not a plea deal that they're not living here she is she's mentally ill you know and they really jumped in and she says you know there's a whole spectrum of mental illness all the way from seasonal aspect disorder and sacred with a semi disorder to obama schizophrenia and she says many people many people especially creative people are often indeed somewhere in between as am i was resisting as am i so i think that there's i think that's a very astute of observation a lot of very artistic people are really sympathetic to another saying that it would be a little more slack if she were a male artist but because she was a mother she

did that they expect her to take over the work care of her family arm and arm but what i have found is that but there are a lot of people like me out there that i i can't take many people come up to me and after events like this it's at the details of our lives a very different picture and i have a lot in common and sometimes people have russ gravel backgrounds like i did but sometimes the people who are raised in great wealth and baby had an alcoholic dad or a loopy mom and as i'm going to start crying when they tell me their stories and i'll say i've never told anybody this before i'm so ashamed and i think that that is great story you know it's there's this one has to be this astonishingly beautiful the road story about how she snuck off the library if i get to the train yourself to be what you want to be because i think your story gave me the courage to to tell my own children about my store i've always kept from them but i think i'm going to tell my children less of that weight holder your case

is a thirty three and thirty for hart but how how awful that she's been carrying this around for so many years would share with you something that they're am a psychologist once said that i was on a panel with a psychologist he said i was truly going to fold along the lines of my demon but they put it to use its secrets secrets are like vampires suck the life out of you but they exist only in the darkness reason was that exposed to the light is that moment of horror wouldn't really recognize it and see if he said that then prof they lose their power and i discovered i was it's very wise and very true that you know a lot of us carry around these secrets and i'm i guess i was surprised when people tell me they are deep shameful secrets that that they would be ashamed of that feels like that's you know anybody out there can i cut yourself some slapped my guards you know you don't have to share you sit with somebody that you take it from me people are kinder

and more compassionate more sympathetic and you realize and i i have not encountered a single person sure there are some out there but they have to have to go home as they see about it is not tasty that single person who who has treated me with contempt or disrespect because of my past and i was so prepared for that when i was so well and it's just a much more pleasant way to live to come to terms with your past and accept herself so like the older woman less about the question of compassion it's the acceptance also goes to yourself gee major decisions for a reason and in most of the people get people yes i write in the book i tried to be in last place i i've been kicking around for a little while for a topic i'm no good at diction i tried to fictionalize the glass castle as was mentioned and i'm very bad at making things up on the paddock myself that i had mono imagination it when i tried

to fictionalize again glass castle hughes on middle name as i could think you know i'm i suppose to make myself more her work or more of a bad diet as it ever did what they did because that was a character for them to behave to be different would have been i can't resist the murder and were maybe the mafia really was after gabby it i couldn't hear what i was supposed to change that anyway i think at around for somebody to profile because i need somebody somebody to dig into to find out they are their story and i i i've spoken to a couple people try to find out the profile that it wasn't quite working and while i was going regularly touts i just it was so i understand your father i don't understand your mother your father was an alcoholic and others of that industry to make some really good questions about her and this is one of the reasons i love nonfiction is because if you don't understand something as discuss are not thinking deeply about the ss always there among the questions he surprised

me with the big answers i thought hit me either you know write her story but then i was interviewing her she kept saying i bought the interesting person here is my mother my mothers that really interesting lady as assistant attorney that her mother's life so does the book is there it's about my grandmother ever said really resisted because i can't prove i can't interview her because she died when i was young but i'm seeking them in his words for it and i'm not you know i am i have to be a lot closer to fiction than i realized because it's all come to stress the moms mabley on so i don't do big that disclaimer at the front not trying to pass this off its historical action is starkly actor it's just it's it's the family story as it's passed down you know she was a tough broad and i say that with the deepest admiration and woman makes me look like a worse she just isn't really a tough cookie at an interesting story she was a schoolteacher by the toughest detained and armed that of a pioneer lady and i think that a lot of us had grandmothers like her who just

see they did what they had to do to get by yes lee anderson is a question did it repeated severe that willie dixon's around me that she was surprised that there weren't was it were addiction in our family it i wonder whether would become an alcoholic died i had expected to go down that road but i also have as have i said there is no way there's just no way i'm doing that i went to visit my brother does as the teacher poses one reason says kids love uneasy he he talks to kids about positive and negative role models is a conservative how positive influence by bit over you buy it but that person or making the wrong choices he said for example my father was an alcoholic and this is no way to touch the stuff so i i i think i i do think that a lot of us have choices like i also understand this seems to be a gene that some people have a proclivity my mother never touched alcohol remember and i think i inherited a record low capacity i

don't think it alters i think it's not so much a decision as emma really sloppy drunk is really not for young mother helen at the moment you know it does it does you know it's a pretty ugly and it says not for me so i have it i dodged bullet in that way i don't know that it's genetic regions strength of character i am actually assuming it's a former that it just it i inherited my mother's could see this at least doesn't drink anything stronger than team yes yeah yeah right away highways to overcome feeling guilty about my success i think i felt guilty as long as i didn't tell my story on what i think a lot of people who pull themselves up do you have that that sense of guilt i think by telling my story i came to understand it better and i believe that my role is is to try to help other people pull themselves up as well i don't i honestly do believe that it's we make choices and there's nothing

special about me if i didn't have anybody can i mean really it all is so strong is so extraordinary the only thing extorted that is i had my face of challenges that some people many people are have some people in this room overcame challenges much greater than mine and i think i really do believe you know america's a really great country this book is actually published twenty five countries and invariably when when somebody journals from another country interviews people say this to repeal only happen in america not the poverty that can happen anywhere but in reinventing yourself and i i do believe that that if you if you had the will and the belief in yourself that you can change things i've come to believe that my role is to help people find themselves thank you for listening to finance laws cover half a memoir of the glass castle it was a presentation of the hall center for the humanities at the university of kansas center wall spoke november eighteenth two thousand eight at woodruff

auditorium in the kansas union recorded by kate you media services i'm kate mcintyre keep your present as a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas if beak it's been