FIRST NIGHT IN WHITE HOUSE
JESSICA BOULTON LEAFS THROUGH MICHELLE OBAMA’S INSPIRING MEMOIR
FORMER First Lady of the United States Michelle Obama has revealed the struggles and successes of her life in her new autobiography, Becoming. The great-great-granddaughter of a slave called Jim Robinson, she was born in 1964 in Chicago’s South Side and became a successful lawyer after studying at Princeton.
In her book, the 54-year-old also tells of her eight years in the White House, and speaks of motherhood to daughters Malia, 20, and Sasha, 17, and marriage to Barack, 57.
RACE AND CHILDHOOD
THE daughter of a city labourer and secretary and homemaker, she had loving parents but still experienced racism. Michelle recalls how her brother Craig was picked up by the police after getting a new bike one summer.
“A police officer accused him of stealing it, unwilling to accept a young black boy would have come across a new bike in an honest way,” she writes.
Her parents explained it was unjust but “unfortunately common”.
And one of her Princeton roommates was moved simply because Michelle was black. The room-mate’s mother was upset her daughter was sharing a room with a black woman, so she campaigned for the university to separate them.
Michelle did not know about this at the time and says: “I’m happy to say that I had no idea why.”
FALLING IN LOVE
BARACK was on placement at her law firm, Sidley Austin, when they met in 1989. She was a junior associate and he was 10 minutes late on his first day.
They became friends but she had sworn off dating. Then, after lunch one day, he said: “I think we should go out.”
But after their first kiss she admits: “Any worries I’d been harbouring about my life and career and even about Barack himself seemed to fall away.”
She says she was intrigued by him, adding: “To me, he was sort of like a unicorn – unusual to the point of seeming almost unreal.”
HER FATHER
HER father, Fraser Robinson III, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when he was in his 30s and Michelle was a young girl. He died after a heart attack at 55, in 1991, and Michelle recalls his final hours.
“Keeping his gaze on me, my father lifted the back of my hand to his lips and kissed it again and again and again. It was his way of saying, ‘Hush now, don’t cry’. With those kisses he was saying he loved me with his whole heart.”
GOING THROUGH IVF
MICHELLE revealed recently that she had suffered a miscarriage and used IVF from 1997.
Talking about having to inject herself, she says she found herself alone, in a bathroom, trying to pluck up the courage to “plunge a syringe into my thigh”.
But of learning it had worked, she adds: “I heard... a swishing, watery heartbeat picked up on ultrasound, emanating from the warm cave of my body. We were pregnant. It was for real.”
MARRIAGE COUNSELLING
MICHELLE and Barack had counselling in 2002. She says: “At home our frustrations began to rear up. Barack and I loved each other deeply but it was as if at the centre of our relationship there was suddenly a knot we couldn’t loosen.”
She admits Barack was reluctant, as he was “accustomed to throwing his mind at complicated problems and reasoning them out on his own”.
But she adds: “After hours of talking, the knot began to loosen.”
BARACK AS NEW PRESIDENT
IT WAS 10pm on November 4, 2008 when the TV news announced Barack would be the 44th President of the United States.
She writes: “We all leapt to our feet and started to yell. It was surreal. He had done it. We’d all done it.”
Daughter Malia, then 10, was worried no one would celebrate with them as the roads were empty.
Michelle says: “Barack and I looked at each other and started to laugh.
“The Secret Service had cleared everything out, blocking every intersection along the route – a standard precaution for a president, we’d soon learn.”
DONALD TRUMP
SHE calls her husband’s successor “a bully, a man who among other things demeaned minorities and expressed contempt for prisoners of war, challenging the dignity of our country with practically his every utterance”.
Of the tape where Trump boasted of grabbing women “by the p***y”, she writes: “My body buzzed with fury after hearing that.”
She also reveals she will never forgive Trump for putting her family in danger when they were in the White House.
It was in 2011 when they first became aware he was “actively working” to revive the “birther” conspiracy theory that Obama was born in Kenya, whipping up hatred. What started as “yammering” on cable news soon picked up traction, and soon, Michelle said his behaviour was not only “crazy and mean-spirited” with “underlying bigotry” but also stirring up threats against the First Family. “Donald Trump with his loud and reckless innuendoes was putting my family’s safety at risk. And for this I’d never forgive him,” she writes. In her epilogue, she also ends any hopes supporters may have of her emulating her husband and standing for president. “I have no intention of running for office, ever,” she says.
THE QUEEN
IN THEIR last year in office, 2016, the Obamas made a final state visit to the UK “which included a quick trip to see our friend the Queen”.
Michelle says her husband has always had a soft spot for Her Majesty, as she “reminded him of his no-nonsense grandmother, Toot”.
They were impressed at how efficiently the Queen dealt with people in a receiving line with “friendly hellos”, leaving no opportunity for banter.
At that last visit, they were to be driven from their helicopter into Windsor Castle by the then 94-year-old Prince Philip, with Michelle in the front passenger seat, according to protocol.
But they were thrown when the Queen wanted Michelle in the back with her. When they hesitated, she said: “Did they give you some rule about this? That’s rubbish. Sit wherever you want.”
RECALLING her first night in the White House, she says: “I remember seeing very few people upstairs beyond the butlers, who were strangers.
“I remember, in fact, feeling a little lonely as I moved down along a hallway, past a bunch of closed doors... Now, suddenly, I felt very much on my own.”
After the exhausting 10 inaugural balls, she admits it all became too much.
“I was so exhausted I thought I might cry. As Barack stepped over the threshold and got promptly sucked into the room, I froze for a split second, then pivoted and fled.”
DIFFICULT MOMENTS
MICHELLE reveals the only time Barack asked for her to join him in the West Wing in the middle of the day was after the Sandy Hook massacre in December 2012.
She writes: “My husband needed me. He’d been briefed in detail on the graphic, horrid crime scene... the bodies of 20 first-graders and six educators torn apart by a semi-automatic rifle.”
■ Becoming (pictured left) by Michelle Obama is published by Viking, priced £25 in hardback.