The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times

In The Light We Carry, Obama develops a theme on differentness and belonging. Through anecdotes from her own life, as well as those of her friends, family, and public figures, she demonstrates how feeling different from others can exact an ongoing mental toll on people and offers advice on how to cope with this difficult challenge. Harnessing American society’s burgeoning discourse on inclusivity, Obama wrestles with the myriad reasons that people may feel excluded, unseen, or different. She acknowledges that everyone may experience differentness from time to time, but for some people it’s a constant challenge:

But for those of us who are perceived as different—whether due to our race, ethnicity, body size, gender, queerness, disability, neurodivergence, or in any number of other ways, in any number of combinations—these feelings don’t just come and go, they can be acute and unrelenting (89).

Obama often refers to this pain throughout her work as she builds her theme. Her analysis engages and resonates with those who can identify with the pain of “differentness” and provides insight and an empathetic lens for those who haven’t had such an experience. Obama shares her personal anecdotes about feeling “different,” pointing to her father’s chronic illness and disability. She recalls, “Even if we weren’t dwelling on it, that differentness was there. My family carried it. We worried about things that other families didn’t seem to worry about. We were watchful in ways it seemed other families didn’t need to be” (6). In addition, she recalls her experience as a student at Princeton in the 1980s, finding herself a racial minority at school for the first time in her life. Obama claims that her peers from racially homogenous communities exacerbated her feelings of “differentness” at the school:

I came to realize that many of my classmates had grown up surrounded by people who looked and acted like them, their lives shaped by sameness, their comfort defined by it, too […] This made me practically unrecognizable to them, as alien as alien can be. No wonder they could so easily stereotype me! No wonder people seemed afraid of my hair, the tone of my skin! A kid like me fit nowhere in their world (104).

Obama’s discussion about her sense of alienation emphasizes that these experiences weren’t merely awkwardness or culture shock but had significant implications for her self-esteem because they made her feel self-conscious and unsure of herself during her formative years of young adulthood. She admits, “I felt ungrounded, divided from myself, almost as if I’d been flung out of my own body. Self-consciousness can do this. It can take away your footing and what you know to be true about yourself” (106). She connects her experience with Black activist and academic W. E. B. Du Bois’s notion of “double-consciousness,” quoting his work: “‘It is a peculiar sensation […] this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity’” (106). For Obama, the remedy to her feeling was creating community with others who had similar experiences. She shares that the Black friends and mentors she made at Princeton’s multicultural center helped her cope and brightened her time as a student: “Maybe because we had no choice, we found ways to laugh about these things […] My group of friends made me feel less alone” (104-05). These friendships helped Obama build a positive sense of self, which she emphasizes as an important starting place for personal growth: “How you view yourself becomes everything. It’s your foundation, the starting point for changing the world around you” (109).