Bella Suartini

Becoming

Book by Michelle Obama

DETAILS

Publisher : Crown; Reprint edition (March 2, 2021) Language : English Paperback : 464 pages ISBN-10 : 1524763144 ISBN-13 : 978-1524763145 Lexile measure : 1170L Item Weight : 12.8 ounces Dimensions : 5.47 x 0.96 x 8.24 inches , Now in paperback—the intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States, featuring a new introduction by Michelle Obama, a letter from the author to her younger self, and a book club guide with 20 discussion questions and a 5-question Q&A #1  NEW YORK TIMES  BESTSELLER • WATCH THE EMMY-NOMINATED NETFLIX ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • NAACP IMAGE AWARD WINNER   • ONE OF  ESSENCE ’S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America—the first African American to serve in that role—she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare. In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it—in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory,  Becoming  is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations—and whose story inspires us to do the same. Read more

REVIEW

She states in the Preface of this 2018 autobiography, “So far in my life, I’ve been a lawyer. I’ve been a vice president at a hospital and the director of a nonprofit that helps young people build meaningful careers. I’ve been a working-class black student at a fancy mostly white college… And until recently, I was the First lady of the United States of America---a job that’s not officially a job, but that nonetheless has given me a platform like nothing I could have imagined… I’ve been hurt. I’ve been furious. But mostly, I’ve tried to laugh this stuff off.” (Pg. ix-x) But now, “My husband is making his own adjustments to life after the White House, catching his own breath. And here I am, in this new place, with a lot I want to say.” (Pg. xiii) When she was admitted to Princeton University, she noted, “it was impossible to be a black kid at a mostly white school and not feel the shadow of affirmative action. You could almost read the scrutiny in the gaze of certain students and even some professors, as if they wanted to say, ‘I know why YOU’RE here.’ … My job, as I saw it, was to hold steady, earn the best grades I could, and get myself through… There were so few of us minority kids at Princeton, I suppose, that our presence was always conspicuous. I mainly took this as a mandate to overperform… by a feeling of ‘I’ll show you.’ … now at Princeton I was representing my race. Anytime I found my voice in class or nailed an exam, I quietly hoped it helped make a larger point.” (Pg, 78-80) When she graduated and was working at a high-end law firm, she was asked by a senior partner to “mentor an incoming summer associate,” and she recalls, “like you, he’s black and from Harvard. Other than that, you know nothing---just the name, and it’s an odd one.” (Pg. 92-93) She continues, “Barack Obama had already created a stir at the firm… rumor had it that he was exceptional… Some of the secretaries … were saying that on top of this apparent brilliance he was also cute… Very quickly, I realized that Barack would need little in the way of advice. He was three years older than I was… He was breezy in his manner but powerful in his mind. It was a strange, stirring combination… Not once, though, did I think about him as someone I’d want to date… He would be, I thought to myself, a good summer mentee.” (Pg. 96-99) She did, however, reprove him for smoking; but “Smoking was the one topic where Barack’s logic seemed to leave him altogether.” (Pg. 103) Listening to one of Barack’s presentations to a community group, she reflected, “I’d never been with someone who dwelled on the more demoralizing parts of being African American. I’d been raised to think positively… But listening to Barack, I began to understand that his version of hope reached far beyond mine. It was one thing to get yourself out of a stuck place, I realized. It was another thing entirely to try and get the place itself unstuck… I was convinced, too.” (Pg. 117-118) Ultimately, she realized, “I hated being a lawyer. I wasn’t suited to the work. I felt empty doing it, even if I was plenty good at it… In my blinding drive to excel… I’d missed the signs and taken the wrong road.” (Pg. 132) But she and Barack had been together for a year-and-a-half, and were beginning to discuss marriage. (Pg. 139-140) While Barack finished at Harvard, for two years they were a “long-distance couple.” (Pg. 151-152) Once they were back in the same city after his graduation, “His was the lone voice telling me to just go for it, to erase the worries and go toward whatever I thought would make me happy… ‘You can do this. We’ll figure it out.’” (Pg. 151-153) After he took his bar exam, they went out to dinner to celebrate, he proposed marriage in the restaurant. “When I said yes, it seemed that every person in the whole restaurant started to clap.” (Pg. 157) She began working for an organization called Public Allies, which recruited talented young people, and placed them in internship positions in nonprofit and public sector work. “For the first time in my life, really, I felt I was doing something meaningful, directly impacting the lives of others while also staying connected to both my city and my culture.” (Pg. 180) She wasn’t always enthusiastic about Barack running for office. When he ran for the Illinois senate in 1996, “I just believed there were better ways for a good person to have an impact. Quite honestly, I thought he’d get eaten alive… [But] If Barack believed he could do something in politics, who was I to get in his way?.. And so I gave my wifely approval to his first run for office, larding it with a bit of wifely caution.” (Pg. 183) Later, she observed, “this I know for sure about my husband. You don’t dangle an opportunity in front of him… and expect him to just walk away. Because he doesn’t. He won’t.” (Pg. 193) They now had two daughters, and Barack was often away from home, or coming home late. “I spent so much energy stewing over whether he’d make it home for dinner that dinners, with or without him, were no longer fun. This was my pivot point, my moment of self-arrest… I drove my ax into the ground… [The girls and I} made our schedule and stuck to it… I didn’t want them ever to believe that life began when the man of the house arrived home. We didn’t wait for Dad. It was his job to catch up with us.” (Pg. 206-207) When they moved to Washington after Barack was elected to the Senate, she mused, “Washington confused me, with its decorous traditions and sober self-regard… At the heart of my confusion was a kind of fear, because as much as I hadn’t chosen to be involved, I was getting sucked in.” (Pg. 219) When he contemplated running for President, “In the end it boiled down to this: I said yes because I believed that Barack could be a great president… I said yes because I loved him and had faith in what he could do… But I’d seen enough of the divisions to temper my own hopes. Barack was a black man in America, after all. I didn’t really think he could win.” (Pg. 226) Later, she explains, “Barack was the right man for this moment in history, for a job that was never going to be easy but that had grown, thanks to the financial crisis, exponentially more difficult… We’d be foolish at this point not to put him in office. Still, he would inherit a mess.” (Pg. 275-276) After he was elected, she lamented, “There is no handbook for incoming First Ladies of the United States.” (Pg. 283) She realized, “I understood already that I’d be measured by a different yardstick. As the only African American First Lady to set foot in the White House, I was ‘other’ almost by default… I had to be better, faster, smarter, and stronger than ever. My grace would need to be earned…” (Pg. 283-284) But Laura Bush and departing President George Bush welcomed her warmly, “possessing a magnanimous Texas spirit that seemed to override any political hard feelings.” (Pg. 289) And of course, here is the part of the book that so upset the current POTUS: “Trump was now actively working to revive the [“birther”] argument… The whole thing was crazy and mean-spirited, of course, its underlying bigotry and xenophobia hardly concealed. But it was also dangerous, deliberately meant to stir up wingnuts and kooks… I was briefed from time to time by the Secret Service on the more serious threats that came in… Donald Trump, with his loud and reckless innuendoes, was putting my family’s safety at risk. And for this, I’d never forgive him.” (Pg. 352-353) She explains, “We didn’t join a church in Washington, because we didn’t want to subject another congregation to the kind of bad-faith attacks that had rained down on Trinity, our church in Chicago. It was a sacrifice, though. I missed the warmth of a spiritual community.” (Pg. 353) As Trump was campaigning in 2016, and Michelle and Barak were both campaigning for Hillary Clinton, “There was a motto Barack and I tried to live by, and I offered it that night from the stage: ‘When they go low, we go high.’” (Pg. 407) But after Trump won the election, she reflected, “I won’t try to speculate about who was responsible or what was unfair. I just wish more people had turned out to vote. And I will always wonder about what led to many women… [to] choose a misogynist as their president. But the result was now ours to live with.” (Pg. 411) She concludes, “I think what I experienced during those years is what many did---a sense of progress, the comfort of compassion, the joy of watching the unsung and invisible find some light. A glimmer of the world as it could be…. Whatever was coming next, this was a story we could own.” (Pg. 416) This is a fascinating, emotionally- and intelligently-written memoir, that is a worthy and heart-stirring reminder of what the Presidency, and the First Lady, USED to be like… Hopefully, such days will one day return again...

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