Michelle Obama - A Life

Zusatztext 42466630 Informationen zum Autor Peter Slevin is a contributing writer for The New Yorker, focusing on politics. He spent a decade on the national staff of The Washington Post , writing extensively about Barack and Michelle Obama, as well as political campaigns and policy debates from one end of the country to the other. He lives in Evanston, Illinois, where he is a professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. Klappentext An inspiring story of a modern American icon! here is the first comprehensive account of the life and times of Michelle Obama. With disciplined reporting and a storyteller's eye for revealing detail! Peter Slevin follows Michelle to the White House from her working-class childhood on Chicago's largely segregated South Side. He illuminates her tribulations at Princeton University and Harvard Law School during the racially charged 1980s and the dilemmas she faced in Chicago while building a high-powered career! raising a family and helping a young community organizer named Barack Obama become president of the United States. From the lessons she learned in Chicago to the messages she shares as one of the most recognizable women in the world! the story of this First Lady is the story of America. Michelle Obama: A Life is a fresh and compelling view of a woman of unique achievement and purpose. Introduction   In June 2010, when Michelle Obama cast her eyes across the class of graduating high school seniors from one of Washington’s most troubled black neighborhoods, she saw not only their lives, but her own. The setting was Constitution Hall, where the Daughters of the American Revolution had prevented opera singer Marian Anderson from performing in 1939 because she was black. So much had changed in seven decades, and yet much had not. Michelle spoke to the graduates about the troubles facing African American children in Anacostia, and she spoke about racism. She pointed out that the neighborhood within sight of the U.S. Capitol once was segregated and that black people had been prohibited from owning property in parts of the community. “And even after those barriers were torn down,” she said, “others emerged. Poverty. Violence. Inequality.”   Michelle drew a straight line from her struggles with hardship and self-doubt in working-class Chicago to the fractured world the Anacostia students inhabited thirty years later. She told them about being written off, about feeling rejected, about the resilience it takes for a black kid in a public school to become one of the first in her family to go to college. “Kids teasing me when I studied hard. Teachers telling me not to reach too high because my test scores weren’t good enough. Folks making it clear with what they said or didn’t say that success wasn’t meant for a little girl like me from the South Side of Chicago.” As she spoke of her parents—their sacrifices and the way they pushed her “to reach for a life they never knew”—her voice broke and tears came to her eyes. As the students applauded in support, Michelle went on, “And if Barack were here, he’d say the same thing was true for him. He’d tell you it was hard at times growing up without a father. He’d tell you that his family didn’t have a lot of money. He’d tell you he made plenty of mistakes and wasn’t always the best student.”   She knew that many of the Anacostia students faced disruptions and distractions that sometimes made it hard to show up, much less succeed. It might be family turmoil or money troubles or needy relatives or children of their own. Or maybe the lack of a mentor, a quiet place to study, a lucky break. “Maybe you feel like no one has your back, like you’ve been let down by people so many times that you’ve stopped believing in yourself. Maybe you feel like your destiny was written the day you were born and you ought to just rein in your hopes and scale ...

Product details

• Authors: Peter Slevin, Peter B. Slevin
• Publisher: Knopf
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 07.04.2015
• EAN: 9780307958822
• ISBN: 978-0-307-95882-2
• No. of pages: 384
• Dimensions: 175 mm x 245 mm x 40 mm
• Series: ALFRED A. KNOPF
• Subject: Non-fiction book > Philosophy, religion > Biographies, autobiographies