Skip to main content

Where the Light Enters by Jill Biden: book review



 Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself  (2019) is the autobiography of Jill Biden, married to American vice-president Joe Biden – and now president-elect.

Jill Jacobs begins her autobiography at the age of twelve in Philadelphia, growing up the oldest of five girls in an Italian family. She writes of the Vietnam war years, the feminist revolution, rock-and-roll, and her new husband, Bill Stevenson. 

 

Joe Biden was married to Neilia Hunter at the time with three children: Beau, Hunter, and Naomi. Neilia and Naomi died in a car accident in 1972. Jill divorced Bill in 1975, married Joe Biden in 1977, and they had a daughter Ashley in 1981. 

 

This book focuses on how Jill met, married, and began a family with Joe Biden. And why it took five proposals before she agreed to marry him. It wasn’t just the pressure of a public life and all the scrutiny it would entail, there were family dynamics to consider, and her career.

 

Like any mother, Jill Biden discusses the routines of raising Beau and Hunter, and then bringing Ashley into the home as Joe rose in his career from senator to Barak Obama’s vice-president. With public life came the ‘work family’ of staff, the ‘military family’ of the service men and women, and the ‘media family’ of interviewers, photographers, and reporters, without ignoring the family of friends. 

 

Halfway into the book, Jill Biden is on the campaign trail when Joe launched his first campaign to run for the position of president in 1987, and again in 2008, before nominee Barak Obama selected him for vice-president. At the same time, she continues her career and her studies.

 

Jill Biden (1951-) was Second Lady from 2008-2016 during the Obama-Biden administration in the White House. She was the only Second Lady to have a full-time job, keeping her job as an educator. On January 20, 2021, she will become the First Lady after her husband’s inauguration. 

 

Throughout the book, Jill Biden focuses on family and not political life. She mentions Joe’s aneurysm in 1988, the death of Beau in 2015 from brain cancer, the onset of grandchildren, and the traditions of the Biden family. It is straight-forward and honest, and provides a solid background to the important factors in the Bidens’ lives. 








 

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

 


MARTINA NICOLLS

Website

Martinasblogs

Publications

Facebook

Paris Website

Animal Website

SUBSCRIBE TO MARTINA NICOLLS FOR NEWS AND UPDATES 

 

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author  of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce  (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Pir-E-Kamil - The Perfect Mentor by Umera Ahmed: book review

The Perfect Mentor pbuh  (2011) is set in Lahore and Islamabad in Pakistan. The novel commences with Imama Mubeen in medical university. She wants to be an eye specialist. Her parents have arranged for her to marry her first cousin Asjad. Salar Sikander, her neighbour, is 18 years old with an IQ of 150+ and a photographic memory. He has long hair tied in a ponytail. He imbibes alcohol, treats women disrespectfully and is generally a “weird chap” and a rude, belligerent teenager. In the past three years he has tried to commit suicide three times. He tries again. Imama and her brother, Waseem, answer the servant’s call to help Salar. They stop the bleeding from his wrist and save his life. Imama and Asjad have been engaged for three years, because she wants to finish her studies first. Imama is really delaying her marriage to Asjad because she loves Jalal Ansar. She proposes to him and he says yes. But he knows his parents won’t agree, nor will Imama’s parents. That
1 comment
Read more

Flaws in the Glass, a self-portrait by Patrick White: book review

The manuscript, Flaws in the Glass (1981), is Patrick Victor Martindale White’s autobiography. White, born in 1912 in England, migrated to Sydney, Australia, when he was six months old. For three years, at the age of 20, he studied French and German literature at King’s College at the University of Cambridge in England. Throughout his life, he published 12 novels. In 1957 he won the inaugural Miles Franklin Literary Award for Voss, published in 1956. In 1961, Riders in the Chariot became a best-seller, winning the Miles Franklin Literary Award. In 1973, he was the first Australian author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for The Eye of the Storm, despite many critics describing his works as ‘un-Australian’ and himself as ‘Australia’s most unreadable novelist.’ In 1979, The Twyborn Affair was short-listed for the Booker Prize, but he withdrew it from the competition to give younger writers the opportunity to win the award. His autobiography, Flaws in the Glass
Post a Comment
Read more

The Beggars' Strike by Aminata Sow Fall: book review

The Beggar’sStrike (1979 in French and 1981 in English) is set in an unstated country in West Africa in a city known only as The Capital. Undoubtedly, Senegalese author Sow Fall writes of her own experiences. It was also encapsulated in the 2000 film, Battu , directed by Cheick Oumar Sissoko from Mali. Mour Ndiaye is the Director of the Department of Public Health and Hygiene, with the opportunity of a distinguished and coveted promotion to Vice-President of the Republic. Tourism has declined and the government blames the local beggars in The Capital. Ndiaye must rid the streets of beggars, according to a decree from the Minister. Ndiaye instructs his department to carry out weekly raids. One of the raids leads to the death of lame beggar, Madiabel, who ran into an oncoming vehicle as he tried to escape, leaving two wives and eight children. Soon after, another raid resulted in the death of the old well-loved, comic beggar Papa Gorgui Diop. Enough is enou
8 comments
Read more