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The Glass Castle: A Memoir
by Jeannette Walls
Reality of memory (9/18/2011)
I am amazed that there is such doubt about the memories of a three year old. Simple research reveals that early memories are tied to trauma and remain vivid throughout a lifetime. Repeated trauma, as seen at the hands of this author, link early memories to each other. Walls writes her memoir at a level that permits her free range to examine and write this memories with near complete recall. My own traumas allow me to know that. My husband has almost no recall of his earliest years, but also experienced no trauma in a warm and loving family. Walls remembers things that hurt. And lots of things hurt her. She lived an outrageous childhood. My disappointment comes with the recognition that, while she tells a great story and tells it well, I have no sense of her own emotional response to what she reports so well. My own brother was a student at Milton J Hershey, and I lived at an orphanage. When kids from MJH deride her talk there one needs to pay attention. No one there is free from childhood trauma. In the end it is about degree and triumph.doubting Walls' story is ridiculous. It's her story, however outrageous. You doubt so much happened to her? That might indicate a complete separation from what is, for some of us, the real world.
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