Former first lady Michelle Obama has been sharing touching photos from her childhood and family to announce her upcoming book, “Becoming.”
Some of Obama’s photos, posted to Instagram, capture what her life was like before becoming a public figure.
“My father, Fraser, taught me to work hard, laugh often, and keep my word,” Obama said in the first post, published Tuesday. “My mother, Marian, showed me how to think for myself and to use my voice. Together, in our cramped apartment on the South Side of Chicago, my family helped me see the value in our story, in my story, and in the larger story of our country.”
“This is me at Princeton in the early 1980s,” wrote Obama in a Wednesday post. “I know that being a first-generation college student can be scary, because it was scary for me. I was black and from a working-class neighborhood in Chicago, while Princeton’s student body was generally white and well-to-do. I’d never stood out in a crowd or a classroom because of the color of my skin before. But I found close friends and a mentor who gave me the confidence to be myself.”
“You can’t tell it from this photo, but Barack woke up on our wedding day in October, 1992 with a nasty head cold,” she writes in another Wednesday Instagram post. “Somehow, by the time I met him at the altar, it had miraculously disappeared and we ended up dancing almost all night. Twenty five years later, we’re still having fun, while also doing the hard work to build our partnership and support each other as individuals. I can’t imagine going on this wild ride with anybody else.”
“Home has always been where our family is…It hasn’t mattered whether we’re lounging on a couch in Chicago’s Hyde Park or, as we are here, in the White House,” wrote Obama on Thursday. “We did our best to make the White House a comfortable place where our girls could climb trees and host slumber parties, where we’d have dinner together as a family, and where we tried to live by the values our parents instilled in us.”
The cover image of “Becoming” was revealed Thursday. Obama’s portrait was taken by renowned photographer Miller Mobley in Washington, D.C.
Obama’s book, due out Nov. 13, will be published in 25 languages. A book tour is planned for the fall release.
