Finding My Voice: When the Perfect Plan Crumbles, the Adventure Begins - Softcover

Jarrett, Valerie

 
9780525558156: Finding My Voice: When the Perfect Plan Crumbles, the Adventure Begins
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0525558152 ISBN 13: 9780525558156
Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2020

Inhaltsangabe

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"Valerie has been one of Barack and my closest confidantes for decades... the world would feel a lot better if there were more people like Valerie blazing the trail for the rest of us."--Michelle Obama

"The ultimate Obama insider" (The New York Times) shares her journey at a pivotal moment in American history

When Valerie Jarrett interviewed a promising young lawyer named Michelle Robinson in July 1991 for a job in Chicago city government, neither knew where that meeting might take them. Jarrett would go on to become a trusted friend and advisor to Michelle and Barack Obama -- and one of the most visible, influential African-American women of the twenty-first century.

Now, in her forthright and optimistic memoir, Jarrett shares her experience as a mother, daughter, and woman who's experienced the magic that happens once we cast aside any unrealistic expectations of a perfect life or a perfect outcome. In Finding My Voice, she offers a galvanizing testament to the power in staying open to a change in course and an embrace of the uncomfortable. Only then, she argues, can we move forward together and truly learn to value--and listen to--our own voices.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Valerie Jarrett was the longest serving senior adviser to President Barack Obama. She oversaw the Offices of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs and chaired the White House Council on Women and Girls. She is currently a senior advisor to the Obama Foundation and ATTN:, and she is a senior distinguished fellow at the University of Chicago Law School.

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Chapter 1
 
The Gift of Freedom
 

My earliest memories are of my childhood in Iran, and they are all wonderful. Like everyone, I’ve no doubt blurred my actual child‑ hood memories with stories recounted by my parents and my own vivid imagination, but my recollection of my first five years is that they were perfect. I was born in Shiraz, a city over four thousand years old, known for its beautiful gardens and for being the home of artists, scholars, and poets during the height of the Persian Empire.

My mother recently reminded me that it actually snowed in the win‑ ter, but all I can remember is blue skies and warm, bright sunshine. The gated community where we lived was actually a compound for the fami‑ lies of the thirty or so doctors who worked at the hospital, many who came from all over the world. We lived in a comfortable two‑bedroom bungalow surrounded by trees and flower beds. There was a park with tennis courts and a huge swimming pool. Every year, we’d plant a Christ‑ mas tree in a patch of nearby woods and cut it down in December. We even had a small zoo on the compound, with mountain sheep, goats, a bear, and a jackal, which was allowed to roam free around the compound and was known to take toys and hide them from time to time.

I felt I had all I could possibly want or need in that special place. Even at the age of three or four, I was free to wander around the com‑ pound as I chose, always under the watchful eye of Saroya, my nanny and our family’s housekeeper and cook. Saroya was small, barely five
feet tall, and always gentle and kind. She had a son of her own, whom she left with her mother during the day while at work. We were always joined on these walks by our Belgian shepherd, Dovuum, whom I nick‑ named Doddy. Once time I fell down in the street. A passerby saw me crying and approached me to see if I was OK, only to have Doddy snarl and keep him at bay. Someone ran to find Saroya and she came, whisked me up in her arms, and took me home, with Doddy following dutifully behind. They were my protectors.

The pool was my favorite place of all. My mother taught me to swim before I could walk, and I loved diving and splashing about in the deep end for hours and hours. My parents had a good friend, Tom, whose real name was Thelma. She headed the Iran‑America Society and her husband, Dale, was an engineer with Point Four, an American foreign assistance program. Tom did all sorts of activities with me, like taking me to a local preschool. She encouraged me to practice English with the young Iranian students who were trying to learn the language. But I would speak only in Farsi—an early sign of my long‑standing desire to be like everyone else. It was in the pool, though, that Tom and I had the most fun. She’d put me on her shoulders, then she would climb on Dale’s shoulders, and Dale would slowly walk down into the deep end until we were all well submerged, then I would pop up to the surface, laughing and coughing from swallowing water. Once Doddy, always my bodyguard, spotted our circus act and tried to rescue me by diving in the water. Chaos ensued, as dogs were strictly forbidden in the pool.

Outside the compound, my parents and I often explored the city and the surrounding countryside. My best friend was Roshan Firouz, an American‑Iranian girl about my age. Her parents, Narsi and Louise, were my parents’ best friends, and we were always running around to‑ gether at one of the two Firouz farms, Big Lou and Little Lou, both named after Louise and their relative size. Roshan was scrappy and forever coaxing me into mischievous adventures. They had a huge don‑ key, Laura, and we’d climb up on her and ride her around and play endless games of make‑believe, with all the different farm animals as the characters in our stories.

My parents and I traveled all over, but one of our favorite day trips was to the ancient Persian city of Persepolis, where I’d climb up and down the old stone stairs, run circles around the columns, and hide among the monuments. Either we’d pack a picnic lunch for the day or my parents would take me to a hotel nearby for a treat. An afternoon entertaining myself among the ruins, topped off by a delicious dinner prepared by Saroya back home, made for a day I still treasure.

Saroya did all our shopping and made all our meals. While kids my age in America were eating hot dogs, Oreos, and peanut‑butter‑and‑ jelly sandwiches, I was devouring her lamb, rice pilaf, and the cool cu‑ cumbers and yogurt of mast‑o‑khiar. She cooked with saffron, cumin, and dried barberry, spices we’d buy when she took me to Vakil Bazaar in the old city. I loved to smell all the fragrant and colorful spices heaped in copper pots and burlap sacks. Traveling the world as an adult, par‑ ticularly when visiting different bazaars and markets throughout the Middle East, the familiar smells always take me back to those early years and make me smile.

To this day I still love all Persian food (except eggplant), but my fa‑ vorite dish is any kind of rice. No meal in my home is complete without a serving of rice. After we moved back to America, it took me until high school to develop a taste for a good hot dog at a baseball game, and it was only a few years ago that my daughter convinced me to try peanut butter. Not bad.

I’m often asked why I was born in Iran. My father once said I should tell people, “Because that’s where my mother was at the time of my birth.” But that answer never seems to satisfy anyone, particularly bor‑ der guards and customs officials. The truth about why we were in Iran is somewhat complicated, but what it boils down to is really quite simple: we were there because my father was black, and he needed a job.

I arrived in this world just as America’s civil rights movement was gaining momentum. The rights and opportunities for which black peo‑ ple were marching and fighting in the United States my parents and I already enjoyed in Iran. While black families were often confined to redlined slums, we had a lovely house in a cosmopolitan neighborhood. While black people in America were marching for the right to enjoy public pools and parks, our neighborhood had lush green spaces where I could run and play and a big blue swimming pool, where people stared only when my dog jumped in the pool with me. While black students in the United States had just begun to be bused into hostile white neighborhoods to integrate the schools, I attended an excellent school with loving teachers, filled with kids from all over the world.

My father, Jim Bowman, had always wanted to be a doctor. He grew up in Washington, DC, in the 1930s and ’40s. In DC in that era, his life experiences were determined by the color of his skin, including where he could attend school. Living in DC, however, meant he was relatively fortunate. The son of a prominent dentist in the city’s small black middle class, he was able to attend Dunbar High School, the pre‑ mier high school in Washington, and perhaps the country, for black Americans at the time. As oppressive and unjust as segregation was, it did mean that black scholars with PhDs from Harvard and other Ivy League schools often had no choice but to teach at the high school level, at high schools like Dunbar. So at a time when few black children had access to quality schools, my father’s education was first‑rate—and the lessons stuck. His grammar was impeccable, and he corrected mine throughout my life, even when it made me sound ridiculous. I used to ring the doorbell when we visited my grandmother, and...

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Verlag
Penguin Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2020
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0525558152
ISBN 13 
9780525558156
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
352
Kontakt zum Hersteller
SC
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/

CL MODESTO LAFUENTE 41
Madrid
Madrid
Spanien

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Hardcover