A Wing of Her Own

My mother and aunt have always been my twin inspirations. First of all, they are actually identical twins. Though in many ways, their similarities are only skin deep. 

While my mother made a name for herself as a hard-nosed reporter before devoting herself to being a resilient, indomitable single mother to my brother and me, my aunt, Dr. Roberta Brinton, is the Director of the Center for Innovation in Brain Science at the University of Arizona.

Two divergent expressions of the same DNA, this dynamic duo have always supported each other in achieving success ― however they defined it. Together, they built the bedrock our family stands on from less-than-secure working-class roots and taught me that whatever we achieve, we achieve together.

So, when President Obama awarded Roberta with the Presidential Citizens Medal on August 4, 2010, my aunt represented more than her groundbreaking innovations in brain science. She stood as proof of the power of sisterhood.

The setting of the award ceremony in the White House’s East Wing made the moment that more poignant.

Since Eleanor Roosevelt professionalized the office during her husband’s administration, the East Wing has been a nexus for women working together to promote an American promise beyond the male-only version of our democracy propounded by this country’s Framers. 

It’s where Eleanor hosted Civil Rights leader Mary McLeod Bethune, and where Betty Ford campaigned for the Equal Rights Amendment. Where Hillary Clinton campaigned fearlessly for women’s rights, Laura Bush garnered increased attention for breast cancer awareness, and Michelle Obama launched her “Let’s Move” initiative that still has me, and I would imagine, some of you, dancing to Beyoncé hits.

In a country where women are told again and again to quiet down and sit down, the East Wing Office of the First Lady has been a constant and unignorable presence in the Executive Branch.

As history would have it, Dr. Jill Biden would be the last First Lady to have her office in the East Wing, since in October 2025, Donald Trump saw fit to bulldoze this unique and irreplaceable living monument to American women’s history.

It was my hope that Dr. Biden’s new memoir, View from the East Wing, would both chronicle her time in this office and pay tribute to what it represents ― every woman in American history who, despite every obstacle, found a way to raise their voice and shape the course of our nation.

Instead, View from the East Wing did neither.

​Contrary to its title, the book begins on a beach in Delaware where she and Joe are enjoying a lazy post-presidency summer afternoon. Readers don’t even enter the East Wing until page 75, and when we do, it’s hardly the command and control center of women’s power that I had foolishly expected.

“My East Wing office felt like no other part of the White House,” Dr. Biden writes. “Our granddaughter Dinnegan has suggested asking the designer Mark D. Sikes to help make it feel both elegant and cozy.”

I put the book down for a minute, shocked and not a little pissed. The tone did not shift when I picked it back up. Her senior staff is treated to a breezy 300 words devoid of grit or substance followed by an exaltation of the White House’s luxuriousness. “After an event, I would usually come upstairs and have a glass of cabernet,” she writes, “so there would always be one waiting for me.”

While the book admirably delves into the Biden family’s struggles as well as Dr. Biden’s commendable commitment to women’s health, education, and economic opportunity, View from the East Wing paints a portrait of the First Lady’s office as sidelined, quiet, and not particularly potent. Dr. Biden even ridiculed her own personal statement against Senator Joe Manchin’s insistence that she abandon her initiative for free community college tuition. 

“I put on a dark blue suit and a black armband,” she writes of the afternoon she was informed of Manchin’s intractable opposition. “It was my own personal protest. When I walked in the room, and they saw what I was wearing, we all broke out into laughter.”

​Ha ha. A woman taking a stand. Ha ha. An avenue for working-class folks to get a free college education flushed down the toilet. Hilarious.

At a moment when we are simultaneously preparing to celebrate our nation’s 250th anniversary and wondering how much longer that star-spangled banner may yet wave, Dr. Biden’s memoir is a missed opportunity to stake a claim to the power of women to positively shape American democracy whether in elected office, from the rooms adjacent to the halls of power, and at our kitchen tables. 

But this Fourth of July, when the fireworks are bursting over the Santa Barbara Harbor, I’ll be thinking of the rich history of women in America, like the women who have inhabited the Office of the First Lady, like my mother and aunt, and so many millions more, who were brave enough to forge the fierce bonds of sisterhood and in this, strong enough to see each other through the perilous fight.