The Michelle Obama Interview (from “Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso”)

Michelle Obama is sixty years old, out of the White House, an empty nester, and she says she’s “truly loving the sixties.” But when Sam Fragoso asks how she’s doing, she adds a crucial qualifier: “I’m doing good… but for the world.” That distinction runs through this entire conversation. The country, she says, feels “janky” — a word she uses deliberately to describe something crumpled, messy, rusted, tattered, and torn. Not broken beyond repair, but definitely off course. “I don’t think anybody’s happy in the mess we’re in,” she says. “Not deep down.”

The South Side Formation

The person who could say “janky” about the country while staying steady herself was built long before anyone called her first lady. She grew up on the upper floor of 7436 Euclid Avenue on Chicago’s South Side, in a room separated from her brother Craig by a wood partition. Her father worked shifts at the city water filtration plant, putting on a blue engineer’s uniform every day despite having multiple sclerosis. Her mother stayed home and ran the household with a calendar on the refrigerator tracking her husband’s shifts so the family could plan around when he’d be home for dinner.