The Light We Carry

Michelle Obama offers readers a series of fresh stories and insightful reflections on change, challenge, and power, including her belief that when we light up for others, we can illuminate the richness and potential of the world around us, discovering deeper truths and new pathways for progress.
The Light We Carry, the former first lady’s second book, is intended to be a practical guide to help us all be a bit more like her father (and like Obama herself) and learn to cope with adversity, be it prejudice, a pandemic or the chilling thought of Donald Trump re-entering the White House. In Obama’s words, the aim is to give readers a “glimpse inside my personal toolkit” – the strategies she uses to be “more comfortable, less paralysed, inside of uncertainty”.

The book contains 10 of these techniques, ranging from “starting kind” (it’s best to ignore the first negative thought that comes into our heads in the morning and instead we should be “inviting” a “better and more tender one”) through to “the whole of us” (life is better when “we grip hands with another soul”). Miraculously, these self-help bromides don’t come across as cloying, mainly because Obama is so disarmingly honest about her fears, failures and all-too human flaws.