The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times

Fraser was Michelle Obama’s father. She repeatedly mentions him in her work as a source of stability and inspiration. The author describes her father as a reliable parent who taught her the value of frugality, preparedness, and hard work. A worker at the local city water plant, Robinson stayed with his wife, Marian, in their working-class Chicago neighborhood, enjoying the area’s familiarity and the friends and family who lived close by.

Many of Obama’s childhood anecdotes center on her father and his resilience and gentle parenting. She recalls how her father never complained about his condition or how vulnerable it made him: “If the indignities of his disability dimmed his spirit, he rarely showed it […] Maybe it was simply the code he chose to live by. You fall, you get up, you carry on” (5). Obama presents Robinson’s having multiple sclerosis as a source of pain and “differentness” for the whole family and credits the experience for helping build her capacity for empathy as well as her personal resilience: “I realize now that my father’s disability gave me an early and important lesson about what it feels like to be different, to move through this world marked by something you can’t much control” (5). Robinson’s personal philosophy was to ignore bullying behavior and cultivate unshakeable self-esteem, an approach Obama adopted while studying at Princeton. She explains, “My father did not worry about how others saw him. He was good with himself, clear about his own worth, centered despite being physically unbalanced” (106).

Marian is Obama’s mother. She frequently mentions her mother and emphasizes the immense influence she had on her values, personality, and life trajectory. Obama compares her mother to an anchor, describing how she grounds and steadies her and the rest of her family, and reveals their close relationship. Obama credits her mother with teaching her many life lessons; she ascribes all her parenting advice to her mother, who apparently has no interest in writing her own advice book. Obama uses anecdotes to demonstrate how her mother taught her about independence, self-sufficiency, confronting fear, and regulating her emotions. For instance, her mother had a minimalist mindset about parenting, insisting that Obama and her brother be as self-sufficient as possible by performing their own chores and walking home from school alone. She helped Obama learn how to be “comfortably afraid” and work through fearful feelings, a tool that she used in challenging situations as a student, employee, and mother. Obama urges others to show their own children the “gladness” that her mother showed her; her mother often said, “You can come home to be liked. We will always like you here” (203). This “gladness” helped Obama feel safe to express herself at home, and she often went to her mother for advice.

Obama insisted that her mother move into the White House with her family, knowing that she and her daughters would benefit from her presence, and offers a humorous description of how her mother was unimpressed by the formality and celebrity she encountered while living at the White House: “I’ve seen her talk to the pope and to the postman, approaching them both with the same mild-mannered, unflappable demeanor” (188). Obama’s mother promptly returned to her old home in Chicago once Barack Obama’s presidency was over. By including Marian in so many of her stories and lessons, Obama underscores her mother’s significant contribution in her life and paints a vivid picture of her childhood experiences, emphasizing lessons and humanizing herself and her family.

The author includes several references to her husband in The Light We Carry, especially in passages about relationships. In her personal anecdotes about meeting and dating Barack, Obama paints him as a rational and introverted problem-solver who is independent and free-spirited by nature. She compliments him frequently, calling him “hardworking,” “soberminded,” and a “sensible striver” (147). She contrasts this with her own personality, which is more outgoing and emotional but favors stability and predictability. Obama reveals how her husband’s upbringing differed from her own, making him more nomadic while she favors structure and rituals. She uses these differences to show that all couples experience conflict and that only patience and communication can resolve it.

The author describes her husband as a central and supportive figure in her life. She uses their relationship to exemplify that while no relationship is perfect, if both partners are willing to compromise and communicate, they can forge lasting and productive partnerships. Using her own relationship with Barack to illustrate her point, Michelle Obama notes that individuals are likely to stay the same over decades, but their relationship can transform:

The change is in what’s between us, the million small adjustments, compromises, and sacrifices we’ve made in order to accommodate the close presence of the other, this hybrid energy of him and me together—us two—now seasoned and battle-tested over decades (167).

Jackson is an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States and is the first Black woman to ever hold that position. The author discusses Jackson’s experience of racism at Harvard and the resulting lessons that Jackson learned about how to cope with such challenges. Jackson’s experience helps Obama illustrate the various consequences of discrimination and bolsters her advice. Like Jackson, Obama believes that the best reaction to negativity and hatred is to remain focused on personal goals, work hard to achieve them, and “keep the poison out and the power in” (291).

Gorman is an American poet who rose to prominence after speaking at President Biden’s inauguration ceremony in 2021. Gorman recited her poem “The Hill We Climb,” which inspired Obama to continue working for societal progress even in times of uncertainty and challenge. Obama praises Gorman’s incredible talent, as well as the hard work she put into overcoming the auditory processing disorder and speech disability she had while growing up. Obama emphasizes how, through practice, Gorman turned the speech disability from a weakness into a strength: “She’d converted what felt like a vulnerability into a unique asset, something potent and useful” (232). Obama presents Gorman as a role model not only for her skill as a speaker but for her work ethic and confidence.