Becoming.....or

….how a reluctant Michelle Obama became the most popular first lady to ever grace the halls of the White House. The dilemma for me as a reader is to try to separate my love for the Obamas, my feelings which are personal and political, from an objective look at this best-selling memoir in terms of style and substance.

If you're a reader who hasn't been an Obama aficionado since, let's say, 2005, then you will absolutely love and appreciate this book from beginning to end. If, like me, you've read everything you could put your hands on since 2005, especially David Axelrod's "Believer," http://readaroundtheworld-sallyb.blogspot.com/2016/08/axelrods-believer-confirms-why-i-am-one.html and seen the films like "Barry" and "Southside with You," then you may find that there are parts of this book that you may decide to skim.

I found the strongest section of Michelle's memoir to be the first third, "Becoming Me." Oddly enough this is where the details and memories seem most acute. Every instance of that childhood in a tiny, sweltering upstairs apartment in the home of her great-aunt Robbie, an exacting piano teacher, comes to vivid life. I could see my own family, all three of us kids in one small bedroom, giggling, spatting, and talking through the night, in Michelle and older brother Craig, as they, too, talked and giggled through the partition their dad had built down the middle of the living room to give them each some semblance of privacy. Her love for her parents, her appreciation for her mother Marian, for the work ethic they instilled in her, runs deep and strong. 

This section is where Michelle overcomes the prejudice she encounters on the playgrounds and in the schools, where she is reminded again and again that she may not be "Princeton material." This is where the laborious perfectionist learned to perform in public on a grand piano, where she easily followed Craig to Princeton and then on to Harvard Law School. This is where Michelle Obama honed the skills that would make her a person to be reckoned with in her own right, earning a six figure salary at a swanky Chicago law firm, long before a cocky intern, Barack Hussein Obama, swaggered in to her 46th floor office ten minutes late. (a tendency she hated and one he would never get over)

"Becoming Us," the second section of the book, is the love story many of us memorized as the Obamas traveled the campaign trail. Michelle says this is when she made the "big swerve." Timing is everything. Just as she was feeling less fulfilled with corporate law, this young idealist and visionary, Barack Obama,  was asking her what she wanted out of life. Where did she see herself down the road? How could she use her talents to help others more and herself less. He had an idea, she didn't like it. Politics!

I found that this part dragged somewhat, perhaps just too much ground to be covered with too few of the titillating, telling details that most of us love to uncover. Michelle Obama is no gossip and rarely throws shade at anyone, though she'd have been forgiven had she done so. Or would she? That is what's at the heart of this book after all. Will the first black anyone always be held to a higher, almost unattainable standard? Yes! And the first black president and first lady?  Of course! The joy of it is that they did attain the unattainable, living exemplary, grace-filled lives in this white house that may have been built by Michelle's own enslaved relatives only a few generations back.

The third section, "Becoming More," soars once again as Michelle hits her stride. No longer out of her comfort zone, she excels at campaigning, yearning this time with all her heart to win so that she and her family can continue to expand on their work for the environment, gun control, educational opportunities for all, and opening their white house to all the people, not just the elite Washington insiders. Michelle Obama's very existence has become a beacon of hope, not just for young girls and women of color, but for all of us who have been marginalized or unseen, whose opinions are overlooked or disregarded whether in board meetings, or on county commissions, or at school, or even at home.

The results of Michelle's eight years in Washington are seen in the incomparable cadre of women who have run for, or plan to run for office, as evidenced by this article from today's New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/29/us/politics/michelle-obama-stacey-abrams-politics.html

So, you may wonder, is this the best book I've read this year? No. That list will begin tomorrow. But, is "Becoming" a must-read? The answer is a resounding yes. Michelle writes as if she's just chatting over tea or a glass of wine. She is very open, personal, and human about her fears, for her girls, her relationship with her husband, about being "good enough" to represent her race and gender in the second most important job in the United States. Anyone who reads her story will have to agree with me. She nailed it!