Becoming Michelle Obama

Biographies or memoirs rarely interest me, unless it’s someone I really want to know more about, like Stephen Hawking. But I’d rather read the books he wrote than someone’s construct of him. Even when written in the person’s own voice, this genre tends to flop if the editor isn’t good enough, or the subject isn’t that interesting, unless everyone involved in the production of the book has a flair with words.

Finally decided to read Michelle Obama’s ‘Becoming’ (2018). There’re so many reviews about it. Reading those constitutes the volume of a book where you could form opinions about the book, about politics and the Obama brand. I read the book as is, a book about Michelle Obama’s life through her eyes. I’m not very bothered to judge. If I’m American, I’d voted for Barack Obama anyway, and I’ve always thought she complemented her husband and held her own.

In a review in The New Yorker published on 6 Dec 2018, Doreen St Félix wrote,

Since Lady Bird Johnson, with the exception of only Pat Nixon, every First Lady has published a memoir. (Our most literary First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, never did.) Traditionally, these books, written in the language of women’s magazines, exalt the Presidential station. Obama’s was expected to be something different: she had more in common with Alice Walker than with Nancy Reagan, after all.

The first part of the book leaves out much of the pain in the American history and treatment of the blacks. The former First Lady had a surprisingly comfortable and protected childhood that’s relatable to many. The author who made it to college at Princeton then Harvard chose to focus on her strength and present-day and navigate corporate America on her terms. Dunno about the talk of authenticity of her person; I don’t care about that. She’s a personality who has no bearing on my personal life. She made good her time as First Lady. As an onlooker, I see her and her husband as strongly representative of diversity in the White House, and hopefully in America.

America today isn't less violent than in the past. America today is so divided. For a country that arose from usurping land from the natives and made up of immigrants, and condones slavery, segregation and lynching while singing the word of God, America is woefully hypocritical. I can’t understand the prevalent racism, and I never will. Humans are evil. You judge a person based on the color of his skin? The veil of race has not lightened, and in fact hung heavier now, alongside intolerance, across many corners of the world.

There’s still a lot I don’t know about America, about life, about what the future might bring. But I do know myself. My father, Fraser, taught me to work hard, laugh often, and keep my word. My mother Marian, showed me how to think for myself and to use my voice. Together, in our cramped apartment on the South Side of Chicago, they helped me see the value in our story, in my story, in he larger story of our country. Even when it’s not pretty or perfect. Even when it’s more real than when you want it to be. Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own.