Photo: Desiree Navarro/WireImage; Joanna Gaines/Instagram
Joanna Gaines' new book didn’t get the reaction she expected from its first reader — her mom.
TheFixer Upperstar, 44, opened up toTodayhostsHoda Kotband Jenna Bush on Tuesday about growing up with a Korean mother and American father in a small town in Kansas — and what it was likesharing those stories with her momso many years later.
Gaines reflects on her childhood , including how she was bullied for her heritage, and how she’s learned to undo the damage it caused her as an adult in a new memoir,The Stories We Tell.
“When the manuscript was finished, I printed it out and I wanted [my mom] to be the first person to read it,” Gaines shares on the show. “Every five seconds she’d call, ‘I’m crying!'”
Thedesignercontinued: “I think I had to write it out to really explain it, but for her even to just hear what her little girl was processing…. It was a sweet moment for us.”
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The star also talked about emulating her mom’s way of coping with hostility at a young age. “We were in the grocery store, numerous times, and people would say things and she would just act like she didn’t hear,” Joanna remembered. “So I’d look at her and she’d straighten her shoulders. I always thought it didn’t affect her.”
Gaines’ own daughters, Ella Rose, 16, and Emmie Kay, 12, were on set to cheer on their mom, who saidshe mainly wrote the book for them.
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Joanna Gaines and family.Courtesy
The mother of five also shares three sons with husband andFixer Upperco-starChip Gaines: Drake, 18, Duke, 14, and Crew, 4. The couple has been married since 2003.
Joanna’s memoir,The Stories We Tell,hits bookshelves on Nov. 8.
source: people.com
