Senator Kamala Harris (CA) started a book tour today, but it also feels like a warm up to a likely run for president in 2020. Harris is promoting two books and one, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey seems to be tied to a potential campaign. Harris appeared on several morning shows saying she wasn’t ready to announce whether she will enter the Democratic primary pool. But you don’t need to read tea leaves to bet she will make it official soon. In the meantime, this book may be laying the groundwork. NPR says:
As with many campaign books, The Truths We Hold reads as a memoir-but-not-really. Harris does tell her life story, but she uses it as a vehicle for telling us what she really wants us to know about her.
Her childhood shows us the values that she received from her mother. The section about her time as a district attorney and then as California’s attorney general allows her to tout her accomplishments and lay out her policy positions. Talking about her time in the Senate allows her to further expound upon her positions — and also to contrast herself with President Donald Trump, whom she presumably hopes to face in a general election.
If you have any doubt that Kamala Harris’ new autobiography, out today, might be related to the upcoming presidential election, it should be well over by the time you get to the minor anecdote on page five.
“I remember that when I was a little girl, my father wanted me to run free,” the California Senator recalls. “He would turn to my mother and say, ‘Just let her run, Shyamala.’ And then he’d turn to me and say, ‘Run, Kamala. As fast as you can. Run!’ I would take off, the wind in my face, with the feeling that I could do anything.”
The other book, Superheroes Are Everywhere, is a children’s book meant to accompany the memoir. Yahoo writes:
Superheroes Are Everywhere is colorful and lovingly illustrated picture book that teaches little ones that superheroes don’t always wear a mask and a cape. In fact, they are all around us—in the form of the friends we play with and the grown-ups who care for us and our communities. Lest anyone misses the powerful message, there is a version of Harris’s story aimed at middle readers, which is coming out later this year.
Watch her interview on Good Morning America above.
