Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama: First Lady, American Rhetor is an edited anthology that explores the persona and speech-making of the country’s first African American first lady. The result of these thought-provoking essays is an interdisciplinary text that explores the First Lady from a rhetorical and cultural point of view. Authors analyze her Democratic National Convention speeches, her brand as First Lady, her communication from her latest trip to Africa, her agenda rhetoric in Let’s Move! and Reach Higher, and her coming out as a Black feminist intellectual when she spoke at Maya Angelou’s memorial service. Readers will recognize Michelle Obama as a rhetor of our times—a woman who influences America at the intersections of gender, race, and class and who is representative of what women are today.

When entertainment mogul Oprah Winfrey endorsed the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama in 2008, mass media experts agreed that he had gained the support of 'the most influential woman in the world.' Seven years later, First Lady Michelle Obama has come close to garnering that level of attention. The seven essays in this pathbreaking collection are by female scholars who specialize in communication studies, rhetoric, feminist theory, and the study of First Ladies. This interdisciplinary treatment of Michelle Obama reveals how she became one of the most effective and poised public speakers in her husband’s administration and, at the same time, elevated and transformed the rhetorical and symbolic significance of the East Wing of the White House. Much more than the dutiful wife of the president, Michelle Obama appropriated the moniker 'mom-in-chief' and employed the physical space of the White House kitchen and garden to advance her battle against childhood obesity. Though every First Lady in the past several decades has complained about the 'fishbowl environment' of the White House, the contributors to the present volume agree that Michelle Obama deserves high marks for adapting to the demands of social media in forwarding the causes she has championed. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty., Elizabeth Natalle and Jenni Simon have assembled a timely and highly readable essay collection in Roman and Littlefield's new series Communicating Gender.The seven chapters follow an intelligent progression; they move from viewing Michele Obama as a partner and political spouse to an individual rhetor and black feminist intellectual. Focusing on Michele Obama's rhetorical choices, the editors and contributors draw from an overlapping pool of literature and theories from social history, political science, and rhetoric to demonstrate how Mrs. Obama challenges the race, class, and gender assumptions of traditional first lady research, thereby elevating first lady scholarship to a new plane., This anthology breaks new ground in the study of American first ladies. Natalle and Simon meld feminist rhetorical theory, criticism, and cultural studies to assess the first African-American First Lady, Michelle Obama. From First-Mom-in-Chief to skilled rhetor, Obama’s advocacy for White House initiatives, political discourse and exhortations for people to serve their communities receive thoughtful treatment and evaluation in this original, creative volume., Michelle Obama: First Lady, American Rhetor is a welcome addition to the growing body of literature on the American first ladies. Natalle and Simon utilize a hybrid framework of rhetorical analysis, feminist theory, and cultural studies to examine Michelle Obama’s rhetoric. I strongly recommend this book to scholars of the first ladyship, communication and rhetoric, and gender and women’s studies.

Elizabeth J. Natalle is associate professor of communication studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.Jenni M. Simon is instructor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.