Michelle Obama: In Her Own Words: Young Reader Edition

by Marta Evans (Editor), Hannah Masters (Editor)

Overview

Get inside the head of Michelle Obama: author, lawyer, humanitarian, and the trailblazing first Black woman to serve as First Lady of the United States.

This collection of quotes has been carefully curated from Michelle Obama’s numerous public statements—interviews, books, social media posts, television appearances, and more. It’s a comprehensive picture of her legacy as one of America’s most recognizable and influential women, specifically geared toward middle and high school readers. The quotes in the collection touch on education, friendship and community, life lessons, America, the role of First Lady, making change, inequality and injustice, and more. This edition includes educational materials and resources for lesson plans designed to provoke discussion and thought for readers in grades 7-12 about Michelle Obama's ideas.

Michelle Obama has been challenging others’ expectations since she was a young woman growing up on Chicago’s South Side. When a high school counselor told her, “I’m not sure you’re Princeton material,” Obama graduated as the salutatorian and went off to Princeton anyway. After graduating from Harvard Law School, Obama spent several years as an attorney at a prestigious Chicago law firm before committing her efforts to public service and community outreach. When her husband, Barack Obama, was elected president in 2008, she began a new chapter of her life as the first Black woman to serve as First Lady of the United States of America. While always conscious of the unique pressures and difficulties of her role, Obama made it her mission to present her authentic self to the American people. Her pride in and openness about the aspects of her identity that made her unusual among First Ladies—including her race, working-class upbringing, career path, and educational achievement—made her a figure beloved by the general public.

Since emerging on the global stage, Obama has become a source of inspiration for young people all over the world, largely due to her engaging authenticity and candor. Now, Michelle Obama: In Her Own Words offers a unique look into the mind of one of the world’s most influential women by collecting 200 of her most insightful quotes. Meticulously curated from interviews, speeches, statements, and other sources, Michelle Obama: In Her Own Words creates a comprehensive picture of Michelle Obama, her wisdom, and her legacy.

Special educational materials for classrooms are available from Agate Publishing.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781572843141
Publisher:	Agate
Publication date:	08/09/2022
Series:	In Their Own Words: Young Reader Edition
Pages:	144
Sales rank:	1,095,071
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	13 - 18 Years

About the Author

Marta Evans and Hannah Masters are editors living in Austin and Chicago, respectively.

Read an Excerpt

“I grew up with a disabled dad in a too-small house with not much money in a starting-to-fail neighborhood, and I also grew up surrounded by love and music in a diverse city in a country where an education can take you far. I had nothing or I had everything. It depends on which way you want to tell it.”
—Becoming, November 2018

“From an early age, [my mom] saw that I had a flame inside me, and she never tempered it. She made sure that I could keep it lit.”
—Instagram, May 12, 2019

“I’m an ordinary person who found herself on an extraordinary journey. In sharing my story, I hope to help create space for other stories and other voices, to widen the pathway for who belongs and why.”
—Becoming, November 2018

“Yeah, I went to Princeton and Harvard, but the lens through which I see the world is the lens that I grew up with. I am the product of a working-class upbringing. I grew up on the South Side of Chicago in a working-class community.”
—“Michelle Obama on Elitism,” The New York Times, April 15, 2008

“In an uncertain world, time-tested values like honesty and integrity, empathy and compassion, that’s the only real currency in life. Treating people right will never, ever fail you.”
—“Dear Class of 2020” Commencement Address, June 7, 2020

“Anger is a powerful force. It can be a useful force, but left on its own, it will only corrode and destroy and sow chaos on the inside and out. But when anger is focused, when it’s channeled into something more, that is the stuff that changes history.”
—“Dear Class of 2020” Commencement Address, June 7, 2020

“I have learned that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values and follow my own moral compass, then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own.”
—commencement address at Tuskegee University, May 12, 2015

“A fairer, more just, and more loving world is always possible.”
—Twitter, June 26, 2020

“It’s easy to lead by fear. It’s easy to be divisive. It’s easy to make people feel afraid. That’s the easy thing, and it’s also the short-term thing. And for me, what I learned from my husband, what I learned in eight years at the White House is that this life, this world, our responsibility in it, is so much bigger than us.”
—“Oprah’s 2020 Vision Tour Visionaries: Michelle Obama Interview,” February 12, 2020

“I carried a history with me, and it wasn’t that of presidents or First Ladies. I’d never related to the story of John Quincy Adams the way I did to that of Sojourner Truth, or been moved by Woodrow Wilson the way I was by Harriet Tubman. The struggles of Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King were more familiar to me than those of Eleanor Roosevelt or Mamie Eisenhower. I carried their histories, along with those of my mother and grandmothers. . . . I wanted to show up in the world in a way that honored who they were.”
—Becoming, November 2018

Table of Contents

Introduction 7

Part I I Had Nothing or I Had Everything: Personal Life

Growing Up in Chicago 12

Education & Career 22

Marriage 28

Parenting 35

Friendships & Community 43

Life Lessons 49

Part II There Isn't One Right Way to Be an American: Public Life

America: Its Politics & People 57

The White House 64

Role of First Lady 73

Let's Move! & Children's Health 79

Part III A Better World Is Always Possible: Worldview

Making Change 93

Inequality & Injustice 102

Supporting Women & Girls 108

The Next Generation 113

Milestones 120

Glossary 139

Additional Resources 142

Acknowledgments 144

Editorial Reviews

PRAISE FOR AGATE B2'S NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING SERIES, IN THEIR OWN WORDS:

"[I, Steve] is the same treatment given such luminaries as Winston Churchill, Abraham Lincoln and Christopher Hitchens and offers Jobs's views on life, death, technology and design, among other topics.” —Timothy R. Smith, The Washington Post

"[Impatient Optimist] is like eating salted peanuts: Once you start reading, it's hard to stop." —Anne Fisher, CNN Money

"A new book revealing many of Steve Jobs' most illuminating quotes." —Lance Whitney, CNET

"A 160-page collection of quotes from the most iconic product pitchman since P.T. Barnum." —Ben Popper, The New York Observer BetaBeat blog

"A much better Jobs product is coming soon. It’ll entertain you for hours, and no — it is not a Jobs-branded iPad or anything similarly high-tech. It is, friends, an old-fashioned book!" —Hillary Reinsberg, Mogulite

"Inspirational reading pleasure." —Courtney Boyd Myers, The Next Web

"The kind of book that you read, think about, and then pass on to a friend or colleague. . . I learned a lot about Jobs’ thinking process." —Allen Stern, CenterNetworks

"[Boy Billionaire] reveals the intimate thoughts and beliefs of the man who has arguably created one of the world's largest companies…and who is also one of the world's greatest social connectors." —Strategy Driven

"A short work to be dipped into for nuggets of business (or law firm) wisdom..." —Michael Roach, Law Technology News

From the Publisher