Michelle Obama

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

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.

Finalist for the 2015 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography

One of Booklist s Top Ten Biographies of 2015

Detailed and absorbing. . . . [B]ring[s] a storied public figure to life. The Washington Post

A deeply informed portrait of the first lady and her native Chicago. . . . Her larger story, told so powerfully in Slevin s biography, suggests she will forever be a force with which to be reckoned.
Chicago Tribune

A must-read. . . . An important new biography. . . . Slevin treats [the First Lady] and her accomplishments with the detail and nuance they deserve.
Elle Magazine

A standout. . . . Michelle Obama s story is an American classic. . . . Slevin combines access to her and her family and friends with a keen understanding of American politics and history.
USA Today

Thoughtful. . . . Ripe with revelations about her deeply complicated relationship with her own position as an Ivy League-­educated black woman. . . . Richly rendered context for Mr. Obama s 2008 campaign, when Mrs. Obama suddenly became a litmus test.
The New York Times Book Review
 
[A] meticulously reported, close-up look. . . . A detailed portrait of an ambitious, civic-minded woman with a track record for getting things done.
The Florida Times-Union
 
Makes a convincing case that Mrs. Obama s popularity today has more to do with events that took place on the south side of Chicago decades ago than with the work of an image maker in the East Wing of the White House.
The Wall Street Journal 
 
Impressively reported and researched. . . . fast-paced.
Chicago magazine

Richly detailed prose. . . . tons of little-known nuggets revealed in the book, offering readers a closer look at the Mrs. Obama they never knew.
NBC

[An] intimate view of her life. . . . The most comprehensive portrait to date of the nation s first African-American first lady.
Atlanta BlackStar
 
The most ambitious and