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‘Becoming’, a book by former first lady Michelle Obama, is displayed at the 57th Street Books bookstore on November 13, 2018 in Chicago, Illinois.
Former First Lady Michelle Obama took to the stage in Brooklyn on Saturday to promote her book, and dazzled the crowd with anecdotes about her life and marriage to the first African-American president.
Although billed as “An Intimate Conversation with Michelle Obama,” the energy at the former First Lady’s book tour stop in New York City was more akin to a rock concert, with roughly 19,000 fans packed into Brooklyn’s Barclays Center to hear Obama speak about her new memoir “Becoming.” In barely a week, the book claimed the title of best-selling book of the year with over 2 million copies sold.
Saturday’s stop on the 10-city tour was completely sold out. The day before the event, tickets on resale site StubHub ranged from $130 for the upper level to $3,700 for a front row seat.
As an upbeat playlist curated by The Roots’ Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson blasted through the speakers, dozens lined up at the merchandise booths to purchase everything from t-shirts plastered with “Work to create the world as it should be” to lily-scented candles that read “Find your flame and keep it lit.”
Obama, sporting a white pantsuit, spent the evening speaking candidly about her path from the South Side of Chicago to the White House, and the lessons learned along the way. The former first lady dazzled the audience with anecdotes about the “white flight” that changed her South Shore neighborhood in the 1960s, to the high school counselor who once told her she was not “Princeton material.”
“It’s sad that it’s so frequent, and it still happens,” she said. “When somebody sets your bar lower for you than you think.”
