“Like many professional women, Michelle Obama was struggling with work-life balance and frustrated with a partner who was less involved than she’d expected,” said a just-issued release about the upcoming book, “Michelle Obama: A Life.”
“One night, while stewing over the fact that she was the one who dragged herself out of bed at 4 a.m. to feed daughter Sasha, she had an epiphany. If she wasn’t available, Barack Obama would have to do it.
“So she started slipping out of the house before dawn to drive to a gym in Chicago’s West Loop,” it added of the book from former Washington Post reporter and Northwestern University Associate Professor Peter Slevin. “By the time she arrived home, Barack would have Sasha and Malia up and fed.”
Slevin added in the book, “If Barack was a helium balloon, Michelle was the one holding the string.”
The release said the book will be released Tuesday. It included these other notes about the first lady’s life:
— Few people know about Obama’s 20-year career in Chicago. Slevin shows how tenaciously she fought to expand minority contracting at the University of Chicago. Slevin also details how Obama lobbied for greater economic diversity at the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools while on the board.
— For the first time, the achievements of Obama’s relatives are highlighted. One of Obama’s inspirations was her great-great aunt, Ora Higgins, who earned two degrees from Northwestern and played an instrumental role in integrating the large mail-order retailer Spiegel in the 1940s. She lived until 2012 and Michelle knew her well. Obama’s uncle, Nomenee Robinson, graduated from Harvard Business School after serving in the Peace Corps. During his reporting, Slevin found a New York Times photograph of him with Jackie Kennedy when she visited India in 1962 as first lady. “Her relatives were anchored on the south side of Chicago at a time when it was a very segregated city and the opportunity for African-Americans was very narrow,” Slevin said.
— Readers gain insights into Obama’s parenting style. Obama, who lifted weights, jumped rope, kickboxed and played tennis to keep fit, decreed that the girls would each play two sports, Slevin wrote. But there was a catch: The girls would pick one sport, Michelle would select the other. “I want them to understand what it feels like to do something you don’t like and to improve, because in life you don’t always get to do the things you want,” Obama said, according to the book.
— Obama’s mother and father, Marian and Frasier Robinson, are two of the most intriguing characters of the book. African-American parents face a fundamental tension in raising children, Slevin said. “The message they have to convey — ‘yes it’s a racist world, but no, it won’t hold you back’ — is the message Michelle heard,” he said. In the book, Obama describes her late father — a gregarious city water plant worker afflicted with multiple sclerosis – as “the voice in my head that keeps me whole and keeps me grounded.” Marian Robinson, who moved into the third floor of the White House, offered a different kind of support. “I can always go up to her room and cry, complain, argue,” Obama said, according to the book. “And she just says, “Go on back down there and do what you’re supposed to do.”Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at
[email protected].
