I heard about this new book on NPR yesterday and it sounded wonderful. You might want to take a listen.
Barbara A. Seals Nevergold and Peggy Brooks-Bertram, who founded the Uncrowned Queens Institute for Research and Education on Women, Inc. at University of Buffalo, gathered letters to Michelle for their book, Go, Tell Michelle: African American Women's Letters to the New First Lady. One of the letters is posted here.
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The voices of women whose stories are rarely told have been gathered by two scholars at the University at Buffalo to offer Michelle Obama messages of love, hope, admiration and support as she becomes the United States' first African American First Lady.
The women's words are being compiled into a book, "Go, Tell Michelle: African American Women's Letters to the New First Lady," by Barbara Seals Nevergold, Ph.D., and Peggy Brooks-Bertram, Dr.P.H., Ph.D., UB senior educational specialists and co-founders of the Uncrowned Queens Institute for Research and Education on Women at UB.
The book will be published in January 2009 by SUNY Press/Excelsior Editions (Albany, N.Y.). The goal is to have the book in Michelle Obama's hands by Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, 2009.
The project had its genesis, Nevergold explains, in the 2008 presidential campaign as she watched President-elect Barack Obama's journey to the White House gather momentum and his wife, Michelle, come into her own as a presidential candidate's wife.
"Throughout the election, it became apparent that African Americans were becoming emotionally invested," she says. "I felt such a sisterhood with Michelle Obama and a kinship.
"At the end of the election, I started to think, how can we as African-American women share with her our feelings about the new role she's going to take?"
