Jeannette Walls is a journalist with MSNBC.com who tried to hide her past for years. She didn't want anyone to know she grew up in stark poverty — sleeping in cardboard boxes and cars and eating from garbage cans.

Then she wrote a book about her childhood called "The Glass Castle." It made the New York Times' bestseller list. She tells host Peggy Wehmeyer her readers helped her overcome self-imposed fears of rejection and ridicule because many of them said they, too, grew up poor.

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