Michelle Obama’s moving memoir
In her upcoming memoir, Michelle Obama opens up about her time in the White House and how she became an icon in her own right
HERS is the Cinderella story to end them all – although instead of a castle she got a big white house and instead of a prince she ended up with the first black president of the United States. That house has now been vacated, of course, and her husband is no longer custodian of the world’s most powerful office – yet Michelle Obama’s star shows no sign of waning. She’s been dubbed “the forever first lady”, an impressive title considering many people struggle to remember the names of former US presidents’ wives. And Michelle is now ready to let her admirers into her world. Her memoir, aptly titled Becoming, will be released later this year and gives fascinating insights into the experiences that shaped her into the woman she is today. The 54-year-old is also frank about wrestling with what was expected of her as husband Barack (56) rose to the presidency. Michelle, a Harvard University-educated lawyer, says she’s had reservations about her identity. “I had big jobs before I was first lady,” she said at the recent American Library Association Annual Conference and Exhibition. “I didn’t come to the position of first lady with a blank slate and that’s sort of what happens in society – you become a spouse all of a sudden. “Because the burden of child-rearing fell on me, as a woman, that was part of my trajectory. As my husband’s ascent got faster and higher and louder there was the challenge of how I make sure my kids are sane, and I have a career.
“That started early, those doubts of how do you balance it all, and is it fair that we’re on his rocket-ship ride when I have one too? That’s something I write about in my book. And that’s what you learn, the balance of marriage – I tell people this all the time, particularly young women.
“What I’ve learnt is you can have it all. But you usually can’t have it all at the same time.”
MICHELLE is who she is today because of her parents, she says. Fraser and Marian Robinson taught her the importance of following through. She and her older brother, Craig (56), were raised in a modest home. Her father was a pump operator and her mother was a secretary before becoming a stay-at-home mom.
“My parents had a strong sense of how to parent and taught us at an early age to figure things out,” Michelle says. “They let us know that as children. Our opinions mattered but they encouraged us to contribute to the solution. You could air [grievances], but you had to be the one to solve whatever it was.
“How I carry myself in the world,” she adds, “is I do what I think Marian and Fraser would expect me to do.”
The story of how she met Barack is well known by now: she was an associate at the Chicago branch of law firm Sidley Austin and he was the intern assigned to her in the summer of 1989. Three years later they were married.
In 2009 they moved into the White
House with their daughters, Malia (now 20) and Sasha (now 17).
“What I learnt over eight years [as first lady] is that home is where we make it,” she says. “We were in the White House but it wasn’t the house – it was us in it. It was our values and our love for one another. And we just moved that to another house.”
Home for the family now is a stately nine-bedroom mansion in Washington DC’s upmarket Kalorama, a stone’s throw from the White House. But the years in the palatial presidential dwelling remain fresh in her mind.
A sense of normalcy was important for her children, Michelle says. “We wanted the White House to be a place of fun, particularly in tough times.”
The house was a hive of activity on Halloween and they had parties where kids would trick or treat.
Having the kids at official functions was normal, she says, recalling their first cultural event in 2009 when they met then-up-and-coming composer Lin-Manuel Miranda.
“It was a spoken-word event, which had never been done in the White House. So we’re in a line and this young kid LinManuel came up, and Barack and I were like, ‘ What are you going to perform, young man?’
“And he said, ‘I’m gonna do a rap about [US founding father] Alexander Hamilton.’ And we were like ‘Pfft’. Remember, you’re the president and the first lady – you can’t laugh in the face of your guests, but are you kidding?
“And then he went on to perform and it was amazing. So after, we were like, ‘That’s really good!’ And he said, ‘ Yeah, I’m going to do a whole Broadway show on it.’ And we were like, ‘Ha! Good luck with that!’”
But he did – and the play became a huge hit. Meeting the musician is a memory that will stick with the former first family for ever.
“I wanted to involve kids because kids are good. They make everything better. And we wanted to make sure the kids felt like the White House belonged to them.”
DURING her tenure as first lady her love of children and promoting a healthy lifestyle became well known. Her graciousness was often written about and her fashion sense was lauded all over the world.
But deep inside, she was just a regular woman with a circle of friends that made life easier. “I love my husband, he’s my rock, but my girlfriends are my sanity,” she says.
And what a circle it is. The list includes Oprah Winfrey, former White House secretary Desirée Rogers and Valerie Jarrett – Barack’s former adviser and the woman who found herself the subject of a racist rant by comedian Roseanne Barr recently.
Considering yourself first and maintaining strong friendships is how she kept sane, Michelle says.
“You can’t save someone else if you’re dying inside. It could be our sense of self-worth, our physical health, our mental wellbeing. If we let that go, if we don’t nurture that, as women, we’re no good to anybody else.
“That’s something you have to practise and something I had to learn. I grew up with women who didn’t think of themselves first, and I thought, I want to show my girls something else. I thought it was important for my girls to see me having strong friendships with the women in my life.”
Her book is about the ordinariness of an extraordinary story, she posted on her Facebook page recently. “By telling it, I hope people who feel faceless, invisible, or voiceless feel pride in their story in the way that I feel about mine. Because when we share our stories, we’re reminded of the humanity in each other.”
People often think stories like hers are unique, she added. “When people ask how a girl from a working-class family on the South Side of Chicago got to where I am, they think I’m some kind of unicorn. That stories like mine don’t exist. But the truth is, these stories simply aren’t told.”
She hopes that when people read her story they’ll share their own because “we need as many stories as we can get”.
“When we take the time to understand each other’s stories, we become more forgiving, empathetic and more inclusive. And that’s what life is all about.” S
‘I didn’t come to the position of first lady with a blank slate’