A Weird Childhood

Jeannette Walls the author of a New York Times Best Sellers, The Glass Castle: A Memoir came to Ball State University on September 21, 2011. In her speech she discussed her story and the things she has learned while writing the story of her childhood, looking back and understanding things she did not understand while she was a child.
While Walls was maturing, she was ashamed of her childhood. She was scared what people might think about, what she called her weird childhood. Walls finally decided to tell her story to the world when she was on her way to a party and saw her mother going through a trash can. Walls took her mother out to eat and asked her mother what she was supposed to tell people about her parents. He mother simply responded, “The truth.” She then decided to tell her story without caring if this is the kind of story people would want to read or not.
One of Walls’ dreams for writing the book was that each person would read her story and understand people in who is in the same position she was in while growing up. She dreamed that after people read her book that they wouldn’t treat people different because they dressed different then everyone else or wasn’t able to take daily showers. She realized that her dream has been fulfilled when people came to her and said that her story changed the way they treated people.
Walls also spoke about an old friend of her brother Brian, Sam, who always had food and a mother that cooked for him. She always wished that she had his life. One day while they was over Sam’s house he was at the table drawing, then his father came into the kitchen and made fun of Sam’s dream of being an artist. Walls realized that she didn’t want Sam’s life because she didn’t have parents who made fun of her dreams.
While Walls spoke she tried to catch the audience’s attention by making jokes throughout the speech. In the audience everyone seemed to be very intrigued throughout her whole speech. I did notice a few people texting on their phone; however, they could be taking notes on their phone like I was. During the Question and Answer section, there were a few people who had very good questions to ask Walls. She seemed excited to answer every question asked.