Michelle Obama Launches Book Tour with Warning to Paparazzi: Leave Her Daughters Alone

Mar. 15, 2025

From left: Malia, Michelle and Sasha Obama.Photo: Courtesy Obama Robinson Family Archive

AsMichelle Obamahits the road on Tuesday to promote her new book to audiences in six cities, she wants photographers and the news media to know that her daughters remain off-limits.

On the eve of publication ofThe Light We Carry, Obama, 58, said in aninterview withPeople en Españolthat the hardest truth she shares in the part-memoir, part-self-help book is anything having to do withMalia, 24, andSasha, 21.

“It is hard for me to delve too deeply, for example, into the lessons I’ve learned as a parent because I’m trying to protect the privacy of my girls,” she says. “You have to pull back on how much you share about their lives and how much you put them back out in the public eye because they’re not looking for the attention.”

It’s a fact of life that their mom vehemently rejects, even as she pulls back the curtain on her famous family’s life a bit to share how, for example, she and her husband Barack cope with empty-nesting and parenting from afar. (Turns out the former president is themost active on the family text chain, protectively spamming his girls with articles about staying safe.)

“I’m trying to be helpful” on the topic of parenting, Obama explains to the Spanish-language outlet, “and my only examples are in my own parenting.” So, she adds, “I find that to be a constant struggle of give and take.”

She added that her daughters read and approved the book’s passages about them prior to publication, but repeated: “They are not seeking the light.”

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source: people.com