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Valerie Biden Owens' memoir 'Growing Up Biden'

President Biden's younger sister released a memoir this week.

Valerie Biden Owens’ Growing Up Biden offers readers an inside look at the Biden family.

And Biden Owens recently joined Delaware Public Media’s Kelli Steele to discuss the book.

Delaware Public Media's Kelli Steele interviews Valerie Biden Owens

President Joe Biden’s younger sister Valerie Biden Owens released a memoir this week.

Valerie Biden Owens
Evan Krape - University of Delaware.
Valerie Biden Owens

Over nearly 300 pages “Growing Up Biden” details Biden Owens’ decades-long career in politics as one of the first female campaign managers in U.S. history, as well as her role in her brother’s career and life

Biden Owens says she hopes readers find the book relatable.

“I’ve written my entire life - I’m a storyteller," said Biden Owens. And I think, our growing up in a middle-class American family, that we were/are not very different from most middle-class American families. 

Biden Owens says while the stories and certain circumstances are different in every family, the threads that bind the fabric of each family together,msuch as commitment, loyalty, love and even heartbreak, disappointment and loss - are all universal threads that all families share.

“I loved growing up Biden," said Biden Owens. "And I loved telling stories about the characters who came in and out of our family. And talking about the values that Mom and Dad tried to instill in my three brothers and me.”

Biden Owens dedicates an entire chapter to her parents - Joseph Biden Sr and Catherine “Jean” Finnegan - detailing their stories and how they helped shape her and President Biden.

There's also a chapter focused on the tragic death of President Biden’s first wife and his baby daughter in a December 1972 car crash and how it changed the family forever.

“Growing Up Biden” can be purchased in most major book stores and online here.

Delaware Public Media' s arts coverage is made possible, in part, by support from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.

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Kelli Steele has over 30 years of experience covering news in Delaware, Baltimore, Winchester, Virginia, Phoenix, Arizona and San Diego, California.