Michelle Obama opens up to Oprah about her memoir
CHICAGO — In writing her memoir, former first lady Michelle Obama said she wanted to share the full picture of her life because she wanted her readers and followers to see how the highs and lows shaped her character and set her on her path.
So she didn’t let her husband read the draft; she didn’t let friends peak at the chapters until it was done. What emerged was a new image of herself.
“I’m finally claiming, my story is the quintessential American story,” she told a sold-out audience of 14,000 people at the United Center on Tuesday night. “Yes, I’m black. Yes, I’m a woman and yes, I grew up working class and my parents didn’t get to finish college.
“How dare someone tell me I don’t love my country.”
Long before the former first lady took the stage for the first stop on her highly anticipated book tour, the crowds had gathered.
They squeezed inside 57th Street Books in Hyde Park late Monday to pick up their pre-ordered copies of “Becoming” at the stroke of midnight. They gathered before sunrise on Tuesday for a pep rally-style taping where Obama sat in conversation for part of the time with her older brother, Craig Robinson, at the South Shore Cultural Center.
They lined the sidewalk on South Woodlawn Avenue in the freezing cold on Tuesday for a chance to have their books signed at Seminary Co-op.
By Tuesday night, the United Center was electric. Outside, people posed for photos in front of the billboards, bundled up in their coats, some of them clutching their books. One man wore his Obama coat — bright orange with Obama written in large white letters across the front. When a series of family photos flashed on the screen, the crowd started clapping and cheering.
Inside, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson and Chuck Brown blasted from the speakers as Obama’s supporters rushed to take their seats. Video montages played for the growing audience.
The headline attraction? Oprah Winfrey’s interview of Obama.
In the past, Obama has appeared measured and disciplined when appearing in public, delivering speeches or giving interviews. But on Tuesday night, Obama didn’t seem to hold back.
“If a memoir is about truth, then I’m telling it,” she said. “Having the opportunity to reflect on one’s life is a luxury. It was absolutely healing for me, to look on my life and figure out how all these little stories that seem meaningless” have value, she said.
And so she talked in detail about her last day in the White House and how she couldn’t bring herself to continue smiling at the inauguration for Donald Trump.
As she and her family flew away from Washington, Michelle Obama sat on the plane and wept, she told the audience at United Center.
It was a moment she forgot to put in the book, she told Winfrey, but as she recently reflected about their last day she remembered the last rush of emotions.
“When I got on the plane, I think I sobbed for 30 minutes,” she said. “I think it was just the release of eight years of trying to do everything perfectly. I said to Barack, ‘That was so hard, what we just did; that was so hard.’ “
As she stood on stage at the inauguration for Trump, Obama admitted she couldn’t force herself to smile.
“Something in me. I couldn’t do it,” she said. “I’m usually better than that ... but it was hard.”
From the moment Obama announced on social media that she had finished writing her memoir, the anticipation had been building. Thousands of her followers from across the country paid from $29 to $2,500 to see the former first lady discuss her memories and reflections with her closest friends in stadiums including in New York, Dallas, Washington D.C., and Phoenix.
But even the lead-up to the United Center event was a carefully orchestrated blitz. There were reviews of the book published with synchronized timing, followed by special issues of magazines and an hourlong television special.
In Chicago, Obama kicked off her tour of the city on Monday with a conversation with 20 teenage girls at her alma mater, Whitney Young Magnet High School. Best-selling novelist Tayari Jones took to social media to post images of a book club meeting hosted by Obama and attended by the television producer Shonda Rhimes, the journalist Michele Norris, and the writers Jacqueline Woodson and Elizabeth Alexander, among others. And then Obama released a letter about her love for the South Side in the Chicago Defender.
But there was little doubt what the main event was.
Winfrey wasted little time warming up the crowd.
“You put on your best, I’m-going-to-meet-Michelle-Obama clothes,” Winfrey said during her opening.
She joked with the audience. “Some of you got your ticket, and then you thought, ‘Who am I taking with me? Who deserves it,’ “she said.
“I see a few woke men in here,” Winfrey added, drawing laughter.
Finally, Obama arrived on stage. She walked out casually, wearing a glistening white blouse that hung off her shoulder, similar to how she looks on the cover of her book. There was a standing ovation from the crowd.
Winfrey asked what it was like to live in the White House. “I describe it as living in the fanciest hotel,” Obama said. And she explained that while the family lives there for free, they are billed for expenses.
“A lot of people think ... taxpayers are paying for that. Yes: You don’t pay rent ... but you get a bill,” she said. But as the audience began to moan with pity, the ever-earthy Obama stopped them. “It’s not an ‘Aww, we lived in the White House,’ y’all,” she said. “You pay for your food, you pay for your guests ... we got the bill.”