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Working as a celebrity journalist between the late 1980s and the 2000s and interviewing some of the best-known movie stars on red carpets, Jeannette Walls felt like she had to hide the extreme poverty she came from, or she would lose everything.
Instead, Walls confronted her roots and wrote her 2005 best-selling memoir “The Glass Castle,” which was later adapted into a film in 2017. On Friday night, Walls told her story on stage at the Trotter Convention Center during the Welty Gala – Mississippi University for Women’s annual fundraiser benefiting the university’s scholarship fund.
“One day, I was going to some fabulous celebrity party, and my taxi got stuck in traffic a couple of blocks away from the party,” Walls said. “And I glanced out of the window and saw a homeless woman rooting through the garbage. I got a good look at her, and I realized that it was my mother. And the emotion that overwhelmed me, I will admit, was shame.”
A few days later, Walls confronted her mother and asked what she should tell people about her childhood and her family, and her mother simply told her to tell the truth.
But the truth is complicated, Walls said, as she had to work through the good and the bad of her childhood to write her memoir. One of her earliest memories included in the book, Walls said, was when she was three years old, living in a trailer somewhere in the southwest.
“I was cooking hot dogs for myself, and I had this little pink dress that stuck out that caught on fire,” Walls said. “And I was taken to the hospital by a neighbor. And I had never been in such a fancy place in my life.”
Once Walls started to recover from her burns six weeks later, her father came and “rescued her” from the hospital, scooping her into the car and driving off. Evading bill collectors and moving around a lot were both normal parts of her childhood, Walls said, though her alcoholic father would make up stories about how the Mafia or CIA were chasing them for his children.
Similarly, Walls’ father told her that one day, he would build them a mansion in the desert, which he would call the Glass Castle, the eventual name of her memoir.
Instead, Walls’ transitory childhood eventually led her family to move into a shack in West Virginia with no indoor plumbing or electricity. Walls remembers sometimes having nothing to eat and having to root around in the garbage at school for food.
But Walls said she views those times as both a curse and a blessing, since those times taught her to be resourceful and strong, and her parents gave her a love of education that she carries with her to this day.
Eventually, Walls moved to New York City, where she got a few jobs and worked her way through college before entering the journalism field.
Eventually, the career pushed her further and further toward celebrity journalism and writing gossip columns, where she met A-list celebrities like Queen Latifah and Tom Cruise, Walls told The Dispatch during a media availability earlier Friday afternoon.
But when her parents moved to New York City, first living with her sister, and then in their van, and then on the streets, Walls started to get nervous that others would connect her to her parents. And then, she wrote her memoir.
“The past has a funny way of catching up with you, and it did on that day that mom challenged me or gave me permission to tell the truth,” Walls said.
While Walls was initially nervous about the negative impact “The Glass Castle” would have on her career, telling her story meant her past no longer had power over her, Walls said. It also meant that others started to share similar stories with her.
“Through storytelling, sharing our stories, we learn how much we have in common,” Walls said.
On the red carpet, when the microphones were off, celebrities would pull her aside to thank her for telling her story and tell her what parts they could relate to, Walls said. The experience pushed her away from celebrity journalism.
Instead, Walls moved to Virginia, bringing her mother with her, though her father had already passed away. Since her memoir came out, she has written three novels, “Half Broke Horses: A True-Life Novel,” “The Silver Star” and “Hang the Moon.”
Over the years, Walls said, she learned that her scars and strength did not make her less valuable, as her husband once compared her scars to “texture” in a fabric. But Walls said she also learned that those who did not have those same experiences are no less strong because of their “smooth” or “silky texture.” Instead, each person’s story is what they make of it.
“Some of us are lucky enough to have silky texture, and some of us are lucky enough to have texture that’s a little bit rougher,” Walls said. “And together, all that texture makes this great big crazy quilt of humanity.”
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