Before Michelle Obama was the First Lady, a position defined by partnership and parenting, she was a career woman with twenty successful years under her belt before her husband dreamed of running the country. In fact, when Barack pitched her the idea, he had to enlist her family to convince her. Peter Slevin, author of Michelle Obama: A Life, told Jezebel: “What Michelle’s mother Marian Robinson said to her son Craig when he talked about Barack’s idea of running for president, is ‘Well, OK, but I don’t think you’ll be able to talk your sister into it.’”
In this newly released biography, the former Washington Post journalist and current associate professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism gives readers an in-depth look at America’s FLOTUS—starting at the Great Migration, and leaving no stone unturned.
What made you pinpoint Michelle Obama’s family history as a starting point for your book?
As I followed Michelle Obama around the country and saw her in action while writing for the Post, I thought: this is a woman who deserves a book in which she’s the center of the narrative and not just the wife of the more famous Barack Obama. So I went into her family history, and the history of her hometown Chicago, which was fascinating from beginning to end.
Chicago’s Great Migration history, which made it a great metropolis and such an important place socially, culturally and politically—particularly with the decline of the Harlem Renaissance—was the key to understanding Michelle’s family and Michelle. She grew up extremely close to her mother, father and a large extended family on the city’s South Side. She knew her grandparents very well, three of whom had come in the Great Migration. She saw what they went through and their family stories became a very important part of her.
How do you think that history plays into her role as FLOTUS?
There’s a very clear line from Michelle’s upbringing on the South Side to her experiences in college and law school at Princeton and then at Harvard, where she confronted these questions of obligation and purpose. Her friends describe conversations where they would be sitting around in the black law student organization offices in the basement of a Harvard building and asking themselves “What does it mean to be a black lawyer? What role do we and the law play in making a difference when we get out?” Her friend Verna Williams, who’s now a Cincinnati College of Law professor, said, “It’s not just about us here at Harvard and it can not be just about us when we get out.”
In answer to your question, Michelle is working very hard to un-stack the deck. She recognizes that opportunity in American society is grossly unequal and she’s doing what she can to make things just a bit better.
And not just socially but health-wise too.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
