Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama (born January 17, 1964) is a former first lady of the United States who served from 2009 to 2017. She was the first African-American woman to hold this office. Her husband is former President Barack Obama.
To say that these are unsettled times is an understatement. But there’s no one we’d prefer listen to a pep talk from than former First Lady Michelle Obama.
“The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times” (Crown, 336 pp., out now) is just that pep talk, a sort of self-help guide in which Obama offers hard-won wisdom about big life topics, such as “finding strength and light within yourself,” building “relationships with others and our notions of home,” and “how we may better own, protect, and strengthen our light, especially during challenging times.”
Though Obama admits she still has self-doubt and doesn’t have all the answers, she presents a rather comprehensive road map to living a fuller, kinder, richer life – something we could all use after a hard few years of epidemic and political instability. That’s why the book will be discussed at our USA TODAY Book Club on Thursday, December 15, with reporter Hannah Yasharoff and special guests to be announced.
Michelle Obama spent most of her eight years in the White House worrying about how the public would see her. As the first Black first lady, Obama was well aware that her every action, word, and fashion decision would be used to fuel nasty, bigoted remarks.
Obama attributes her capacity to endure nasty comments to her upbringing and the motto instilled in her by her parents: she was enough exactly the way she was.
