After entering foster care at 3 years old, Charell Star spent many of her childhood years fitting herself into other people’s spaces. So, when she awoke alone in the quiet of her New York condo on her 30th birthday, she was struck by the realization that she’d finally fulfilled an enduring wish: At last, she had a place that was all her own.
Star, 44, is now a TV host covering fashion and culture for outlets such as NBC’s “New York Live,” as well as a marketing executive and writer. She’s also an outspoken advocate who has used her experiences growing up in New York’s child welfare system to bring awareness to the unique challenges faced by youth in foster care.
She’s been featured on-air on NBC’s “The Today Show” and “Good Morning America,” and her writing has been published by news platforms including “MadameNoir” and “Newsweek.” Four years ago, she appeared in “Humans of New York,” a viral social media storytelling platform featuring thousands of New Yorkers and in “Feeling Wanted,” a documentary about foster care used by nonprofits around the world as a training tool. She serves on several nonprofit boards including CASA NYC, which matches volunteer court-appointed advocates with foster youth, and City Living NY, which helps young people aging out of the system secure housing.
Star details her path from hardship to self-sufficiency in “Trash Bag Tales & Other Stories from an Accidentally Happy Life,” a memoir released this spring.
Her gregarious and welcoming nature shines through in her first book. Stories of being “dumped” into strangers’ homes with a black trash bag full of her belongings are peppered with humorous and uplifting takes.
“Trash Bag Tales should be read by child welfare professionals, those with lived experience, foster parents, and the world at large,’’ Liz Northcutt, executive director and founder of City Living NY said in a review of the book. “It is the reminder we need that our past does not define our future.’’
Star’s memoir opens with descriptions of her happiest childhood memories, such as cooking eggs and eating chocolate cake with her great grandmother — one of the few stabilizing forces in her life. Taken from her family, she later describes abuse and instability she endured in foster care and how she moved toward her life today as an advocate and storyteller.
Star doesn’t hesitate to share her “open wounds that were raw and unaddressed,” such as being bullied for being one of few Black kids at boarding school, and never having a choice about which stranger she lived with while in foster care. She writes about emotional and physical abuse she experienced while living with a relative who was her guardian at the time, and of eventually being reunited with her mother — a woman who struggled with addiction — at age 11.
Other recollections are uplifting, such as one detailing a magical encounter between Star and the renowned poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou, who she interviewed while working at a public relations agency. The poet served Star tea in her Harlem brownstone and gave her a piece of insightful, invaluable advice.
“Dr. Angelou gently took my hand as she handed me the signed books and whispered, ‘You will do well in life if you take people into your trust,’” Star writes. “I froze for a second. I’d never felt so exposed and so seen at the same time. I’d only spent a few hours in her company, but she had seen right through my nervousness, my fear, my uncertainty, my trauma, my distrust, and my hope.”
Star hopes young people who have faced challenges similar to hers can learn from her story.
In an interview with the “Imprint,” she highlighted the experiences that shaped her as a child in foster care, and how she dealt with that trauma as a young adult. The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
What inspired you to start writing your story, and what did you learn about yourself during the process?
It was really a desire to ensure that I am reaching the most people and educating them about foster care, and also educating them about trauma and healing from trauma. What I pieced together while writing this book, looking back on my journey, was realizing that I didn’t get here alone. There were people along the way — even if they couldn’t be my full protectors, they were mentors. They were watching out. They were trying to help. First, my great grandmother, who I love so much, my teachers in school who always looked out for me, the foster parents who were really great foster parents.
And if anyone out there is wondering if they should lean in and offer help, decide to look out for a youth who might need it in their lives, I will say it made a crazy difference in my life — having those people who couldn’t take me in, or couldn’t foster me, but just looked out for me in the ways that made all the difference in my world.
The mistreatment you faced in some homes often ends with the memory of a black trash bag waiting for you that social workers filled with belongings you didn’t get to choose. Several states around the country including New York have taken steps to outlaw this practice. How did those bags make you feel every time you moved?
The bags made me feel subhuman. It’s unfathomable to be disregarded in such a way while going through one of the most terrifying and heartbreaking moments of your life. It’s something I’ve spoken about publicly for a very long time. We have the full power to change this for youth who are currently in the system, to ensure that this doesn’t happen to them, that they don’t have that additional trauma heaped on them. To see other people advocate for these changes across the country and have these laws put in place makes me feel very proud. I hope that every city across the country follows suit, because there’s absolutely no reason for youth to be having their things thrown in trash bags. It’s absolutely dehumanizing. It is not a budget issue. It is just a lack of empathy issue, and so that is something we can all address and fix.
Education played a big role in grounding you throughout all the difficult changes — you went to six different schools in six years and won impressive scholarships. You also spoke to The Imprint a couple of years ago on the importance of improving graduation rates for foster children. Why was school so important for you growing up?
Studying was an escape for me. School was the place I felt safest. I was lucky to have some really amazing teachers who were looking out for me in their own ways — ensuring that I didn’t get left behind, even though I had weeks and months of missed class time. My middle school teacher, for example, rounded me and nine other kids up on the first week of school and said, “You guys are on a separate track,” and that’s how I ended up getting a scholarship to go to boarding school. It really was my educators who kept making way for me, especially in those early years. And I’m so thankful for them.
The book takes readers through vastly different parts of your life — from a traumatic childhood to freedom and self-discovery as an adult. If a reader could only read one chapter in your book, which would you choose?
Probably the chapter where I talk about meeting Maya Angelou, who is my idol. I was with her in her house for just eight hours, and because I had known so much about her and been enamored with her, I trusted what she said. It was a transformative moment where I just decided that I had to take a chance on someone.
Anyone who has any sort of trauma, whether you’re in foster care, whether you had a terrible or difficult upbringing, there has to be a point in your life, even when life has told you to to be standoffish, that you have to trust someone and be willing to to really take what they say to heart. And so that is a really good chapter for people who may be hesitant about letting others in.
You grew up in the foster care system in the 1990s. As a board member of several nonprofit organizations in the city that work to improve opportunities for foster youth, how do you think New York has progressed in how foster children are taken care of — both during and after aging out of the system? What else are you excited to be a part of as an advocate?
New York has come a long way since I was in the system. Some of the laws that have been changed nationally and in New York have leaned into trying to ensure that youth are not removed from their families as the first line of defense. They have not been successful 100% of the time — we still have a number of youth exposed to the child welfare system, who have been removed when they did not need to be.
One of the key things that we always have to remember is that the system is penalizing people for being poor, and those who are Black and brown. They’re overwhelmingly represented within the child welfare system. New York has a long way to go, but there have been improvements. Part of those improvements, though, come from the fact that youth have gotten more vocal and have become advocates and are willing to speak out. And it’s a lot harder to ignore us when we are telling you our story and saying: “I went through this, 20, 30 years ago. And I can give you 100 other youth who can tell you it’s the same way.”
Susanti Sarkar is a New York City-based reporter covering child welfare for The Imprint.