Michelle Obama's “Becoming” Is Not Your Usual Public Figure’s Memoir — This One Offers Perspective
“If you have never passed a winter in Chicago, let me describe it: you can live for a hundred straight days beneath an iron-gray sky that claps itself like a lid over the city. Frigid, biting winds blow in off the lake. Snow falls in dozens of ways, in heavy overnight dumps and daytime, sideways squalls, in demoralizing sloppy feet and fairy-tale billows of fluff. There’s ice, usually, lots of it, that shellacs the sidewalks and windshields that then need to be scraped. There’s the sound of that scraping in the early mornings — the hack hack hack of it — as people clear their cars to go to work. Your neighbours, unrecognizable in the thick layers they wear against the cold, keep their faces down to avoid the wind. City snowplows thunder through the streets as the white snow gets piled up and sooty, until nothing is pristine…”
From her days in the public eye, it seemed inevitable that she would write a book of this nature. People were always eager to hear what she had to say, with more than a few taking her words to heart, and when it was announced that she would be publishing a memoir, keen observers rubbed their palms in anticipation, eager to gain a deeper insight into the thought processes behind the actions of one of the modern world’s most influential women.
Michelle Obama, a lawyer, university administrator, and former First Lady of the United States of America, has been a strong voice in diplomatic circles over the years and has championed many noble causes, while at the same time refusing to get directly involved in politics. From presidential campaigns to advocacy for minority rights, she has become a household name around the world, so it was easy to infer that her book would be a lot more than a narcissistic, self-aware, self-aggrandizing body of work. It is commonplace to see public figures churn out memoirs which usually chronicle their travails in positions of power, but this was always going to be different.
Published in 2018 by the Crown Publishing Group, “Becoming” is an autobiographical account of Michelle Obama’s life as a lawyer, daughter, sister, mother, wife to one of the world’s most powerful men, and a successful woman of colour. For the purpose of context and to highlight her life’s trajectory, the book, nearly 430 pages long, is divided into three parts.
“Becoming Me” provides elaborate detail about Ms. Obama’s early life, growing up in a predominantly white neighbourhood on the southern part of Chicago, learning to play the piano, watching her father battle with multiple sclerosis, navigating high school in a highly competitive environment, pursuing a degree in a university with very few people of colour, and settling into a career as a lawyer.
“Becoming Us”, the book’s more intense section, highlights the circumstances between her meeting (and eventually falling in love with) Barack Obama, processing the grief occasioned by the death of her father Fraser Robinson and her friend Suzanne Alele, career doubts, storms in the early days of marriage, and initial difficulties with childbirth. She also writes about her husband’s political ambitions, campaigning for him in the presidential race, standing up to negative press, and unwittingly throwing her two daughters into the spotlight.
Things slowly wind down in the book’s third part, “Becoming More”, wherein Ms. Obama reflects on her days in the White House, having to embark on trips around and beyond the United States, stepping into the role of a fashion icon, and championing causes for the homeless as well as the LGBT community. She also spares a few thoughts about her campaigns in support of Hilary Clinton during the 2016 U.S Presidential Elections.
This autobiography offers perspective on the sociopolitical terrain within which Ms. Obama has lived, grown, loved, and operated. From the late 1960s where Martin Luther King Jr. had just been assassinated to the late 2010s where women are still fighting to get enough seats at the table, this book is as much a journey through time as it is about the life of a brilliant individual, depicting the long and tortuous road that minorities have had to tread, in fighting to actualize their rights. She tells the world how her high school counsellor dismissively tried to talk down her university aspirations, she reminds the world how some sections of the media labelled her an “angry black woman” during the 2008 U.S presidential campaign, and from her story, people can find inspiration and at the same time learn that there’s still work to be done in ensuring that all voices get heard.
Becoming does not provide too much information about Ms. Obama than the world may have already gathered from her Wikipedia page, but it surely creates a more personal, introspective feel to her life and work. This book is a lot more than the musings of a former world leader or washed-up TV star, there’s nuance, there are lessons to be gleaned from her story, and even where in certain portions of the book it appears that she is trying hard to explain certain decisions, there is a richness to the humanity that characterises a woman known and respected by many.
