Early in Michelle Obama's life, a young relative asks her, "How come you talk like a white girl?" Michelle Obama came from a home where she was expected to be smart and to "own" her smartness and "inhabit it with pride" but lived in a neighborhood where "speaking a certain way --- the 'white' way, as some would have it --- was perceived as a betrayal...as somehow denying our culture."
What is it like to straddle different worlds?
What is it like to harbor ambitions that put you at odds with the community and the people you love and trust the most?