Michelle Obama: Her Own Words

Michelle Obama in Her Own Words: the Views and Values of America's First Lady, edited by Lisa Rogak. Copyright © 2009 by Lisa Rogak. Published in the United States by PublicAffairsTM, a member of the Perseus Books Group.

The election of Barack Obama has brought worldwide attention not only to what his policies will be, but to what kind of First Lady Michelle Obama will be. Throughout the long campaign season, Michelle Robinson Obama garnered a good amount of attention, kudos and criticism about her words, actions, even her appearance, but few people knew what kind of role she would play once she settled into the White House. Michelle Obama In Her Own Words contains 200-250 quotations arranged in approximately 75 different categories. Drawing on quotations from a variety of newspaper and magazine articles, transcripts, speeches, and TV interviews and profiles, the quotations date from Michelle’s career as a high-powered corporate lawyer in Chicago and her high-powered executive jobs in the Chicago Mayor’s office and at the University of Chicago, up through the election of November 5th, 2008. Rogak locates and organizes the funny, fascinating, inspiring (and occasionally controversial) words of our future First Lady, on topics such as:

• Abortion
• Affirmative Action
• Balancing career and family
• Barack’s safety
• Being compared to Jackie Onassis
• Her childhood
• Her critics
• Her fashion sense
• Hillary Clinton
• Iraq
• Racism
• Rev. Jeremiah Wright
• Sarah Palin
• Terrorism
• The “elitist” tag
• The Presidential campaign
• The role of the First Lady
• Women who have influenced her