In This light in us, a new essay published Tuesday in 36 countries, Michelle Obama opens up about the negative thoughts she has about her appearance, the “mild form” of depression that has taken hold of her during the pandemic and her fearful spirit which almost changed the course of history. An antidote against depression that is not devoid of political opinions.
After the success of Become, her memoir published in 2018 which resulted in a speaking tour and a documentary, the former first lady of the United States resumes writing, this time to deliver inspiring advice on how to remain optimistic in this period of uncertainty. “When you are able to see and recognize your own light, you find the courage to use it,” she writes.
Mainly based on her personal story — although pieces of those of several other women, for several racialized, are also told — her reflections emanate from her own moments of vulnerability and anguish when she asked herself: “Am I I up to it? five words that she says have haunted her since her youth on the South Side of Chicago.
Challenging pandemic
From the first chapter of the book, she recounts how the first months of the pandemic were trying, despite her privileged position, when she felt “disoriented” and “distraught”, freed from this armor that can constitute the fact to be constantly occupied and still hurt by the results of the 2016 presidential election. -she. It always hurts. She says she was shocked to hear Donald Trump utter “racist slurs”, legitimize hatred and refuse to condemn “white supremacists”. Taken in this state of mind, pain and frustration, she even hesitated before agreeing to give a speech at the national convention of the Democratic Party in August 2020.
PHOTO JOSE LUIS MAGANA, ASSOCIATED PRESS
michelle obama
“I had been spared depression until then, but it looked like it, in a milder form,” she continues. I found it difficult to remain optimistic or to reasonably envisage the future. »
It was then that she took up knitting, coming from a long line of seamstresses. Knitting was his “tool”, a concept that will come up a few times in the book. If it is certainly not by knitting stitches and purling stitches that we reduce global warming or that we fight racism, thus looking at something tiny, on a tiny task, allows to “quietly get out of the doldrums”, believes the one who stayed at the White House with her husband and their two daughters from 2009 to 2017.
Mme Obama also returns to the events of January 6, 2021, when supporters of Donald Trump, refusing to recognize the results of the presidential election, stormed the Capitol, causing, in his eyes, “immeasurable damage”.
More personal areas
Later, while she invites readers to decode their fear and to maintain a reasonable relationship with her, so that she can be a guide and not a hindrance, Michelle Obama confides in her “fear brain” with whom she has lived together for 58 years. An intrusive roommate who could have changed the course of history. “I didn’t want my husband to run for president because I couldn’t foresee — I couldn’t even imagine — what was in store for us,” she says. Some of my doubts were legitimate, of course, but what really worried me? The novelty. »
PHOTO DOUG MILLS, THE NEW YORK TIMES ARCHIVES
Barack Obama and Michelle Obama at the President’s inauguration ceremony in January 2009.
Her reluctance to agree to her husband Barack Obama had been told in Become, just like her childhood in a modest environment, her meeting with her future husband, her father’s illness and the help of her mother, on whom the couple could count during their stay at the White House. In This light in us, she delves into even more personal areas, especially when she claims to often hate her appearance. “I don’t count the number of mornings when I turned on the light in the bathroom only to want to turn it off immediately when I discovered my head in the mirror. When I look at myself, my first instinct is to identify my imperfections; all I see is my dry skin and puffy eyes, everything about me that could and should be better. “Remarks with which many women will identify, which she makes as part of a call for benevolence towards oneself. Later, she will talk about becoming aware of her difference, which manifested first in her tall height in elementary school and then in the color of her skin, on the Princeton campus.
In this very “personal growth” book, Michelle Obama does not claim to have a miracle recipe for staying calm in the face of uncertainty, finding your voice or living a happy marriage. Through her reflections on love, friendship, parenthood, difference and invisibility, she offers advice that will help everyone — especially young people who are losing their bearings — to rise, as she does. called in what has become one of his most famous quotes: “When they go down, we go up. »
This light in us
michelle obama
flammarion
352 pages