[cheers and applause] as first lady she has become a role model for women and girls. And an advocate for healthy families, servicemembers and families, Higher Education and international adolescent girls education. Her muchanticipated memoir, becoming, will be published in the us and canada november 13, 2018 by crown, a division of Penguin Random house and really simultaneously in 24 languages. [applause] considered one of the most popular first ladys. [cheers and applause] mrs. Obama invites readers into her world to chronicle the experiences that have shaped her from her childhood on the south side of chicago , to her years as the executive balancing demands of motherhood and work to her time spent at the worlds most famous address. Warm, and wise, becoming is a deeply personal reckoning of a woman of substance who has defied expectation and who story inspires us to do the same. We are also fortunate to have librarian of Congress Carla Hayden hosting a conversation with mrs. Obama today. Nominated for this position of library of congress by president barack obama february 2016 and her nomination confirmed by the u. S. Senate july 2016. Sworn in as the 14th librarian of congress september 2016. Carla hayden and first lady mrs. Obama come together now for an indepth conversation around her forthcoming memoir becoming and the experiences that have impacted her life, her family and her country. Michelle obama. [cheers and applause] thank you so much theres a lot of librarians here. [laughter] you guys are looking good. [laughter] hi carla. How are you . There have been many thrills but to be a librarian and sitting here with you is the most. Here i am the interviewer. Just remember our days. I have known carla since i was a baby, a baby professional. You shouldnt be nervous. What a professional you were because the Public Library to come back from pittsburgh the library was part of your portfolio. Yes it was. It made such a difference to have somebody that understood libraries and read and government. [laughter] that was her. [applause] that was not shade. Not at all she was just making a point. Because i was coming in from an academic teaching library. We go way back. And its been a big part of your family. Absolutely. We are readers, the obamas. We started reading to the girls when they were babies, infants because as a little kid i loved to read aloud and would set up the stuffed animals and the barbies and read to them and show them pictures and then go back i love the act of reading aloud so when i had kids they were my real babies i could read two. I read to them all the time. All the time i know every word of any dr. Seuss anything by heart still and as the girls grew up we continue to incorporate books as a form of family activities. When they got older we started to read more complex books together. Barack and melia read all of the harry potter books aloud from cover to cover than she could see the movie after they read it that was their father daughter ritual. I stayed out of that because you want the father to have a thing. So i know anything about harry potter because i would not even get involved in that. Thats their thing. When sasha got older i read life of pi with her and then we saw the movie. We were big comic family readers. We love calvin and hobbes. Yes. Reading one is a part of the way we put our kids to sleep at night. I felt music reading culture was an important part of their development from very early on. We are big readers. One of the images from when you were in the white house during the holidays, you would be going to the bookstore. And give books as gifts. Thats the only place he knew how to go as president. He could golfing it to the bookstore. Those were the two things he felt comfortable doing outside of the white house. That was an annual ritual of he and the girls to go to one of the bookstores for the holidays. In chicago you know that bookstore, that was our Neighborhood Store we like to go to. Yes bookstores and libraries were a big part of our life early on. My First Experience going to the library, i was for it was like the First Official time i got identification you feel big time with your name on it prick i remember going to the library in the neighborhood three blocks from our house and my mom was a housewife at the time would take us. That was my first major big girl thing i could do to get my library card and watch them put me into the official files. I felt important i didnt know what to do with it because i didnt have a wallet or purse. [laughter] but i felt special just to have it. It was a community space. Like for all of you, its a major part of any community and that was the place for our families to go to get the early books, dick and jane , you go to the childrens corner and then it that one day i would graduate to go upstairs where the books were darker that is where the serious books were upstairs. Did you ever get to go . Yes. I graduated one day but thats when the library became work. Research papers, do we decimal system. Only here when we get a shout out for the dewey decimal system. [laughter] i love you all. I do. [laughter] see you continued and went to school all of that and in your life got busier. How did you find time to read it just for pleasure . We all went to know could you read anything for pleasure . Yes. There were moments of escape. Today however i spent most of my time selfishly focused on my book. So thats what i am reading. [laughter] its almost ready. Its coming i have been immersed in the process so this year has been tougher because im trying to stay in my voice. But when i do have time my chief of staff melissa by the way is more excited to be here then she was to meet bruce springsteen. [laughter] melissa is my book recommend her and she loves you all. I may lose her here in this Convention Center tonight. She might leave me. Shes been with me from the very beginning of the campaign that she is my book guru i usually read what she tells me i should read. She throw some books in my bag on a long trip. But lately . I have eclectic list. I have read commonwealth. I love a good story that takes me outside of myself. Everything ladysmith has done. Accidentally reread it. I read it two years ago it was on my shelf and i have i read this . I started to read it and i thought i know whats going to happen. So this past decade i would forget what i have read and then i realized by the third chapter i read it already but i finished it. I love her storytelling in characters. May just finished reading very powerful the nightingale i read the other day shout outs for the nightingale. [laughter] so i love stories i love to escape. I needed that escape over the past ten years to get out of my story and into somebody elses. Were you able to do that . Yes. I couldnt read in the white house there was too much going on. We were running so fast whenever i got a chance to sit down and pick up a book maybe i would get a sentence and i would fall asleep literally sitting down i dont know if i was napping or passed out i couldnt tell the difference i would wake up it would be an hour. Thats how the white house years felt. So usually on a longer trip by kate get into a book, but it was a hectic eight years. You said pick up a book so that is a physical book . Yes. Im not in the reader i like to have a book in my hands. [cheers and applause] even in my writing process come i like to hold it. I cannot edit things on the computer well. I feel that i have to write down my thoughts. I can jot down things on the iphone but thats hard have to feel it and touch it. I am old. Sorry. [laughter] we still have a lot of books in our house and my husband who is an avid reader still loves books around everywhere we have gon gone, boxes and boxes i cannot get rid of he will not allow me to do it. We have books on shelves. As a library and i did some research and to understand you actually worked in a Library Bindery . Yes. One summer bob goldmans book bindery. This summer right before i went to college. Friends mother worked they are in it was my first real job. Before then i did the neighborhood job. The family paid me to do everything tutor, piano, train the dog, watch their kids, this mascot Meter High School but then i graduated to a job downtown. Our friends mother worked there. It entailed doing one thing 1000 times every day all day over and over. I put the little metal thing in a whole them pass the cardboard over to the guy who would slam it down. I would take the metal thing and put it in the hole and pass it. I was good with doing that for the first day even. [laughter] i was aiming at finishing it i thought there would be an end there would be thousands and i would prove that i was so fast i could be done and then i realized its never over. They just kept coming those little pieces of cardboard in the Little Things and that went on for weeks and weeks and weeks doing the same thing and i just thought my god i am ready for college. [laughter] i can do this. But it taught me Great Respect for the men and women who do that work every day. That thankless work that makes it possible to have books and folders and i learned work ethic at the bindery. The dozens of people in the plant who came there to do the same job every day for years and years and years. It reminded me of my father. The bluecollar workers who didnt look for passion in their jobs or have the luxury like we did to think about the things that we love to put food on the table. That was my First Experience shoulder to shoulder with men and women making a living for their families. You saw it first. My father, frazier robinson. Every value i have in me came from my mother and father and watching them day today. My father was a bluecollar worker, working the same job his entire life. At the Water Filtration plant. He contracted at the time of his life so i never knew him to be able to walk without the assistance of a cane. He got up every day. As a shift job some days he was days and sometimes nights sometimes evenings so the schedule changed. Remember he put on his white tshirt and his blue uniform to get his crutches to make his way out the back door to go to his job without complaint, without regret because he was proud he had a job that allowed him to invest in his children, me and my brother. He put two of us through college with that salary and princeton at that. [applause] we went to those schools long before they had the Financial Assistance that puts you completely through. My parents had to pay a portion of our tuition and he made sure it was paid on time. We could never be late not register for classes. So who i am today is because of my parents and that hard work ethic and the values of your word is your bond. Do what you say youre going to do. Trust is important. Honor. Honesty. I saw my father behave in that way every single day regardless of race or station in life. Thats who i think about when i read my book and how i carry myself in the world. I do what i think marian and frazier would expect me to do and i hope to be that person for them. [applause] my mom is here. Time on. Hi mom. Whenever anything happens she says mrs. Robinson. Those were jobs that had been away from home usually most of the week. And istill have a fulltime job. I was at any point in time i was a professional with a big job of my own and we had two little kids. And we had, we could afford health and we had a couple of great babysitters, but the time i lost that one good babysitter and that crushed me likenothing else. When glow, when she said she had to leave because she needed to make more money i thought i was losing an arm and barack was trying to consoleme and i said dude, just get out of here. You are of no help to me. I need glow, i dont need you. You do nothing for me. But i remember that pain andi thought how can i go to work every day and not know that my kids are good. At there with somebody who loves them which is not to get on a soapbox which is why affordable childcare is so important because so many having access to that kind of security, for all the families out there who dont have achoice. They have to go to work. I know that pain of what it feels like when you dont know your kids are good good, not just being safe but theyre in a place where somebody loves them and is going to instill values in them and read to them andtake them to the library is and is not going to plop them in front of the tv so i was about to quit working. And i thought i just cant do it. I cantkeep up the balance and who stepped in but my mom. Whowas not yet retired. What she would come over the crack of dawn. Allow me to go to the gym. Start getting the kids ready for school. She wake them up, fix breakfast. I come backand grab them, she go to work. She get off , she come and pick them up. Get them home, start dinner. By that time i get home and we had our routine down and theres just something about having your mom in that place where you know she will kill someone for her grandchildren. So she was the grandmother at the pickup line. She was going to be the first one of the pickup line cause she didnt want her littlest grandbabies Walking Around wondering where their ride was. She would get there and hour before pickup to be the first car. So that shed see her babies and say bring them here. You dont, you cant pay for that. So we brought that energy with us to the white house. And we needed it, that kind of nononsense solid, tell it like it is, unimpressed with everything kind of personality that is marianne robertson. She did not want anybody doing her laundry at the white house. Shecould do her adult laundry just fine. She was notorious. We had housekeepers and butlers and everything. At the whitehouse. She was like to touch my underwear. Ive got. Too old for that. My moms role model. She thought the girls to do their laundry so they had laundry duty with grandma. So she helped keep them grounded. Oh my god, yes. She kept the whole white house rounded. And everybody is to go up to her room. The butlers, the staff baby in their chitchatting and she was in shooting the breeze, telling their stories. She does have a whole little counseling session of their in her sweet area of rooms but she kept us humble. Andfocus on what was important and she was my sounding board. Anytime anything crazy happened over the course of the day,the first thing i would do , her suite of rooms were on the third floor above us and i go there and i sit onher couch. He had on msnbc or something and she be trying not to talk about what was on the news until i let her know i was ready to talk about it and she would do what she always did. Sit there and just listen. And then what. Because my mother was not going to solve your problems for you. He was going to listen and she would say whatyou think about that. And then you figure it out and by the time you leave you figure out thats great. So so much of my ability to get out there again and again had to be with growing up with that little counseling room and sitting and having Marianne Robinson go youll be fine. Just go on back down there. Cant stop now. Did she ever tell you, you know you talked about that a lot, what are you going to do . Did she say you talked about that a lot, what are you going to do about it . My mother and i write about this, about how my mother, my parents had a really advanced sense of parenting at a very early age. They taught us how to advocate for ourselves very early. Silver expectation was like you know how to fix your problems. You know what to do. And when you teach kids at an early age that they have a voice thats worth listening to number one and that their opinions actually matter and thats what they get day in and day out at their home at the dinner table, to adults listening intently and asking questions and you know, encouraging kids to contribute. Those were our dinner tables. When you came home from school with a problem you could air but youhad to go back and solve it. So 40, 50 years old my mother wasnt assuming all that she needed to solve any problems i had as first lady. Her expectations were you will do this and you will do this well because you know how to do this so there was never any need to her to pretend like she had togive me directions. She knew she instill those values in me when i was four and five and seven so she had done the work. You mentioned to you almost thought about quitting because you did have and i dont know how many people realize what highpowered positions you had as a career woman. And balance that. Before i was first lady . Oh yes. I had a job before i was first lady, everyone. And a prettyhighpowered one. Executive Vice President. I was smart, continue to be and sometimes thats why when i get the question how did you know what to do as first lady . Okay, i went to princeton. Harvard law, i was a lawyer. Work in the city. Worked with carla, working on libraries and i worked at economic and planning development, was Vice President hospital. Maybe it was osmosis. I dont know. You were able to use some of those experiences. I didnt come to the position of first lady a blank slate and thats what happens in society. You become a spouse all of a sudden and i felt and i talk about this in the book of how i felt myself becoming a spouse. And i went from being an executive to becoming a spouse. Where the first thing people would talk about is what chooses she wearing and its like oh number people. Youre not focusing on my shoes, right . Im standingin front of a military family. Were doing important things but so yes, there were moments in my profession because the burden of child rearing fell on me as a woman. There was a part of my trajectory as my husband ascend faster and higher and louder , there was a challenge of how do i make sure my kids are saying and i have a career. But yes, that started very early. Those doubts, those questions of how do you balance it all and is it fair where on his rocketship ride. When i have one too. But thats something that i write about. Thats what you learn, the balance in marriage and i tell young people this all the time, particularly young women is that what ive learned is that you can have it all but you usually cant have it all at the same time. And thats a myth that even having expectation of having it all. Its a self for young people, young couples, young men and women with children. The notion that youre not successful if you dont have it all. Well, its hard to balance it all but i started to learn that life is long and there are tradeoffs that you make and i think that the tradeoff of stepping off of my path until at least i found a child care solution that worked for me which was my mom. Entertained the notion of stepping off