- Genre: Memoir
- Number of pages: 448
- Literature: American
- Awards: 2018 Goodreads Choice Award and 2019 NAACP Image Award
” For me,becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as a forward motion, a means of evolving,a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.”
It is a memoir of Michelle Obama, one of the inspiring women. She has inspired millions, including me, with her strong personality, authenticity, voicing out opinions with utmost honesty, passion to create a difference in the world, and drive to bring good in ordinary people’s lives. All of this has reflected well throughout the book.
In this book, she tells her compelling journey of “becoming” Michelle Obama, “becoming” wife of Barack Obama, and “becoming” First Lady, the person whom many of the people admired and held in high regard.
The book is categorized in 3 parts: Part 1 talks about ‘Becoming Me’, becoming Michelle Obama. It offers insights and experiences of her upbringing in a small apartment in Chicago with working-class parents, her ambition and the determination to excel academically, and the challenges she faced as a black woman at Princeton University.
Part 2 provides some insights on ‘Becoming Us’, becoming Michelle and Barack as us, how she first met Barack Obama at a law firm, how she fell in love with him, the struggles she faced being a wife of a senator, and then all other political roles Barack Obama played that had a good amount of impact on their personal lives and relationships. She talks about her insecurities, which makes her journey so relatable. It was easy for her to fall in love with a man with a vision who was optimistic without being naive and undaunted by conflict. At the same time, how it was very difficult for her to be in love with a guy whose forceful intellect and ambition could possibly end up swallowing her own ambition. It was even more difficult for her to witness his humility and willingness to sacrifice his own family needs for a bigger purpose in life. In the book, she also talks about the challenges she and Barack Obama confronted in order to become parents.
Part 3 talks about ‘Becoming More’, the journey of becoming First Lady. First Lady, the role which she never asked for. The role, which itself is undefined and does not have any job description yet, has the power to create meaningful impact on the world. She had recasted herself in the role very well and carried it with the upmost grace for 8 years. In this section, she broadly provides understanding on how Barack Obama becoming president of America brought their family into the spotlight, how it impacted their day-to-day activities, and how their life was inside the White House. She also discusses the pressures of being under constant public scrutiny and the racial and gender stereotypes she faced.
People were dubbing Barack Obama a “Rock Star” and an “Overnight Success,” as if he hadn’t spent years working up to that moment.Shift of their ordinary to extraordinary life was not just a day or two, year or two years effort; it was a lifetime effort full of fighting racism despite an awareness that they could be the reason of provocation and many negative things. Michelle and Barack Obama have always been one of my favorite couples, but reading this book took me closer to their lives and made me feel more and more connected. It made me realize that we have got to be twice as good as to get half as far.
Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama Robinson; born January 17, 1964) is an American attorney and author who served as the first lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017, being married to Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States.
Raised on the South Side of Chicago, Obama is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School. In her early legal career, she worked at the law firm Sidley Austin where she met her future husband. She subsequently worked in nonprofits and as the associate dean of Student Services at the University of Chicago. Later, she served as vice president for community and external affairs of the University of Chicago Medical Center. Michelle married Barack in 1992, and they have two daughters.
Obama campaigned for her husband’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns. She was the first African-American woman to serve as first lady. As first lady, Obama worked as an advocate for poverty awareness, education, nutrition, physical activity, and healthy eating. She has written three books including her The New York Times best selling memoir Becoming (2018) and The Light We Carry (2022).
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