Tag: memoir

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Michelle Obama Snuck Out Of The White House To Enjoy Rainbow Lights Celebrating Marriage Equality

In her new memoir, Becoming, former First Lady Michelle Obama shares a touching episode from the day the U.S. Supreme Court declared marriage equality the law of the land.

The date was June 26, 2015.

Although she had just returned from a funeral service for the victims of the Charleston church shooting, she saw crowds gathering in front of the White House as evening fell.

From the window she could see a purple glow.

The staff had arrange to illuminate the residence in rainbow lights in celebration of the landmark ruling by SCOTUS.

Seeing the energy of the people, she found she was “suddenly desperate to join the celebration.”

After checking with her husband (“There are tons of people out there – you know I can’t do tons of people!”) and her youngest daughter, Sasha, who was engrossed in her iPad, Michelle found Malia was down for the adventure.

(image via Twitter/WhiteHouse)

From Becoming:

“Looking out the window, I saw that beyond the gates on Pennsylvania Avenue, a big crowd of people had gathered in the summer dusk to see the lights. The north drive was filled with government staff who’d stayed late to see the White House transformed in celebration of marriage equality. The decision had touched so many people.

“From where I stood, I could see the exuberance, but I could hear nothing. It was an odd part of our reality.

“We made our way down a marble staircase and over red carpets, around the busts of George Washington and Benjamin Franklin and past the kitchen until suddenly we were outdoors. Malia and I just busted past the agents on duty, neither one of us making eye contact.

“The humid summer air hit our faces. I could see fireflies blinking on the lawn. And there it was, the hum of the public, people whooping and celebrating outside the iron gates.

“It had taken us 10 minutes to get out of our own home, but we’d done it. We were outside, standing on a patch of lawn off to one side, out of sight of the public but with a beautiful, close-up view of the White House, lit up in pride.

“Malia and I leaned into each other, happy to have found our way there.”

In related news, Michelle appeared on ELLEN today to chat on the new book.

The segments included a visit to Costco with Ellen (where she created a foreseeable spectacle); her first kiss; Malia attending her prom with secret service agents in tow; and a discussion about inauguration crowd sizes (“Two of ours, one of someone else’s…”).

Michelle’s publisher, Crown Publishing, reports that Becoming sold over 725,000 copies on its first day making it one of the biggest debuts of the year.

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Omarosa: Trump’s “Mental Decline Could Not Be Denied”

Omarosa Manigault-Newman (image via screen grab)

In her new tell-all memoir, The Apprentice reality celeb Omarosa Manigault-Newman appears to insinuate that Donald Trump’s mental capacity is in rapid decline.

From The Daily Mail:

In an exclusive excerpt obtained by DailyMail.com, Omarosa, 44, who first met Trump when she appeared on The Apprentice and later became an assistant to the president, tells of the dread she felt while watching Trump’s interview with Lester Holt last May.

‘While watching the interview I realized that something real and serious was going on in Donald’s brain. His mental decline could not be denied,’ she writes in Unhinged: An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House.

‘Many didn’t notice it as keenly as I did because I knew him way back when. They thought Trump was being Trump, off the cuff.

‘But I knew something wasn’t right.’

‘For the Lester Holt interview, I watched it on a small TV in the upper press room (the lower press room was built on top of the old swimming pool and turned into the briefing room) by the press secretary’s office,’ she writes.

‘Throughout this erratic and contradictory interview, I kept thinking, ‘Oh no! Oh no! This is bad!

‘Donald rambled. He spoke gibberish. He contradicted himself from one sentence to the next.

‘Hope [Hicks, then communications director] had gone over the briefing with him a dozen times hitting the key point that he had fired Comey based on the recommendation by the DOJ which the vice president and other surrogates had been reinforcing for days.’

But when questioned by Holt, the president contradicted previous reports about how the senior law-enforcement officer was dispatched from his office.

Trump also said that he had been planning to fire Comey, apparently contradicting initial reports from the White House that it was a recommendation from Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that spurred Comey’s ouster.

It’s important to note that Omarosa was dramatically fired from her position as Director of African-American Outreach and escorted off the White House premises on December 13, 2017 following reports of an altercation with Chief of Staff John Kelly.

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Omarosa Pens Trump Tell-All “Unhinged – An Insider’s Account Of The Trump White House”

Reality TV celeb Omarosa has penned an explosive tell-all about her time in the Trump administration

Infamous reality TV celeb Omarosa has released her new ‘tell-all’ about her time in the Trump administration titled, Unhinged – An Insider’s Account of the Trump White House.

Check out this description from Amazon:

The former Assistant to the President and Director of Communications for the Office of Public Liaison in the Trump White House provides a jaw-dropping look into the corruption and controversy of the current administration.

Few have been a member of Donald Trump’s inner orbit longer than Omarosa Manigault Newman. Their relationship has spanned fifteen years—through four television shows, a presidential campaign, and a year by his side in the most chaotic, outrageous White House in history. But that relationship has come to a decisive and definitive end, and Omarosa is finally ready to share her side of the story in this explosive, jaw-dropping account.

A stunning tell-all and takedown from a strong, intelligent woman who took every name and number, Unhinged is a must-read for any concerned citizen.

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Michelle Obama’s Memoir Has November 18 Release Date

Former First Lady Michelle Obama tweeted the news today that her upcoming memoir, to be titled Becoming, will be released on November 13, 2018.

“Writing BECOMING been a deeply personal experience,” she wrote via Twitter. “It has allowed me, for the very first time, the space to honestly reflect on the unexpected trajectory of my life. In this book, I talk about my roots and how a little girl from the South Side of Chicago found her voice and developed the strength to use it to empower others. I hope my journey inspires readers to find the courage to become whoever they aspire to be. I can’t wait to share my story.”

It was announced last year that both Michelle and President Obama had signed a joint agreement with Penguin Random House for both of their proposed memoirs.

TIME reported that the dual memoir package could be worth in excess of $60 million.

Presidential memoirs have historically racked up big fees and book sales.

Former president Bill Clinton’s memoir “My Life” was reportedly sold for more than $10 million.

Former First Lady Hillary Clinton’s “Living History” drew an $8 million advance.

And when it comes to book sales, Barack Obama has a proven track record. His three previous books — “Dreams From My Father,” “The Audacity of Hope” and “Of Thee I Sing” — have sales in excess of four million copies.

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Out Memoir – Janet Mock “Surpassing Certainty: What My Twenties Taught Me”

Transgender advocate Janet Mock chats with People Magazine about her new memoir, Surpassing Certainty: What My Twenties Taught Me.

Here’s an excerpt:

What’s your advice for other trans women as they navigate relationships and romance?

The number one thing is to ensure that they feel safe enough to tell someone their story … It shouldn’t be the responsibility of trans women to disclose to every person that they meet, [that they’re transgender] whether it’s a romantic partner, friend, roommate or coworker… There’s a misconception that trans women are out there deceiving people. We’re not out there deceiving people. We’re not even trying to pass. We’re just trying to be ourselves in a society that has put us into boxes, and has told us that if we don’t fit in those boxes then we don’t belong and we’re not deserving of happiness, of fulfillment, of contentment. [We need to have] agency over who we tell our stories to and whether we want to tell our stories to someone at all.

What did you think of Caitlyn Jenner’s memoir? What is the danger of lumping all transgender stories together?

What’s so great about this time period that we’re in is that we can have Caitlyn’s story, we can have my story, we can have Laverne Cox’s story. We can have a mosaic that shows the complicatedness, the things that overlap. But also I think it challenges us to nullify the notion that there’s a single trans story out there — because there isn’t. [Particularly with Caitlyn Jenner’s experiences], they show that trans folk can be problematic, that trans folk can have conservative ideology and political views that don’t even align with the community that they’re advocating for. For me, as an activist and a storyteller, I’m very centered in ensuring that we show the complicatedness of the human experience that happens to be rooted in my community’s trans experiences.

An excellent read, make sure you check out Mock’s book over at Amazon and other digital download sites.