Michelle Obama: The light we carry
NEW YORK - It should be easy to write off ‘The Light We Carry,’ by former First Lady Michelle Obama - with its toolbox framework, motivational one-liners and inspirational quotes from Toni Morrison, John Lewis and Maya Angelou - as a clichéd self-help manual, an easy holiday season layup after putting in the hard work on her mega-bestselling memoir, ‘Becoming.’ Among the reasons it’s not so easy to dismiss are the indefatigable humility of its author and, perhaps more importantly, the resolute necessity of a book like this right now, in this particular moment, for a pandemic-afflicted nation that is politically siloed, socially untethered, emotionally shell-shocked.
Divided, like her memoir, into three parts, ‘The Light We Carry’ is both personal and practical.
Experiences
Obama reflects on her experiences not just as a public figure but as a daughter, friend, mother and partner, weaving together small yet detailed anecdotes with larger life messages in an effort to remind us ‘that self-worth comes wrapped in vulnerability, and that what we share as humans on this earth is the impulse to strive for better, always and no matter what.’
If ‘Becoming’ was about, well, becoming, its follow-up is about Obama committing even more deeply to the person she has become. ‘Maybe more than I ever had,” she wrote in this book’s introduction, reflecting on her speech at the 2020 Democratic National Convention, “I’d experienced the kind of volcanic clarity that comes when you speak from the absolute center of your being.”
In the opening chapter, ‘The Power of Small’, Obama’s discovery of knitting