Title: Becoming
Author: Michelle Obama
Year: 2018
Genre: Autobiography
For this months Book Club read at my local bookshop, we read the bestselling memoir by former First Lady, Michelle Obama, titled Becoming.
I had seen the memoir back in 2018 when it was first released and really wanted to read it as Barack and Michelle Obama, more than any other President and First Lady always felt the most warm, human and and down to earth when I saw them on TV or in the media.
I can also still remember in 2008 when I was 13 years old and Barack won the US Election, becoming the first black President and feeling the sense of optimism that it brought in (even if it was brief with the 2008 financial crisis looming large that year).
Summary
In Michelle’s autobiography we see the woman and the man behind the headlines, how Michelle was raised as a working class girl from South Side in Chicago, to her going to college at Princeton and becoming a lawyer, to eventually leaving this role behind and working for various charities and public offices before becoming America’s first Black First Lady.
The autobiography also chronicles how Michelle met Barack, their relationship and the challenges they faced as Barack’s political career began to rise and the struggles Michelle faced to balance normality for herself and her family alongside Barack’s political career, as well as her learning to find her voice within the role of First Lady.
Thoughts
One of the things that immediate things that struck me about this memoir and indeed runs throughout is how raw and unflinchingly honest Michelle is as she takes you through her life and her personality really shines through in this memoir.
In the Preface, we enter Michelle’s story a few weeks after a huge shift in America’s political history, with Donald Trump succeeding Barack Obama as the 45th President of the United States. On this night Michelle finds herself alone and she decides to make herself a cheese toastie, something which for 8 years of her life she often had aides and staff to do so. Whilst it is a fairly simple everyday thing for most people, it presents to us just how drastically life as First Lady changes but also humanizes Michelle beyond this symbol.
Also intriguing in the preface which is revisited a few times is the practicalities behind the “changing of the guard” as old leaders leave and new leaders come in. Whilst we as the public see the public inaugurations in the US, or in the UK we see the new Prime Minister at the lectern outside 10 Downing Street but Michelle talks about the somewhat mundane practicalities, that the old leaders possessions, clothes and furniture are all moved out so that the new leaders things can be moved in, which must feel strange when it has been that persons home for however long they get to lead and there is a sense of surrealism when Michelle mentions how her daughters used to play on the lawns of the White House, taking an everyday image and highlighting the magnitude of it when you are living in one of the worlds most famous addresses. Indeed the topic is revisited when Barack wins in 2008 and George Bush’s possessions are moved out and again in 2016 when Trump won.
The only real image I can think of in the UK that possibly gives an insight to this is the famous one in 2010 when Gordon Brown and his family were photographed leaving Downing Street when David Cameron won but Michelle highlighting these also made me really connect with her as the narrator in her story.
She then takes us back to her upbringing in Chicago’s South Side, a working class area and there was plenty of things here that I did not know about her. In particular some of the adversity she faced growing up such as her Dad’s battle with multiple sclerosis, her brothers resulting panic over life threatening situations, as well as her family still reeling from the effects of slavery and the Jim Crow laws which hadn’t long been abolished when Michelle was born, as well as the changing dynamics of Chicago in the 1960s and her area as people moved away to the suburbs, leaving South Side in a more violent and dangerous state.
Michelle also raises some interesting points about societal expectations from childhood and how the area you grow up can influence what you become which is another recurring theme. As a child, Michelle was encouraged by her close family to strive for success but she mentions how at a party a distant cousin accused her of talking like a “white person” as her parents taught her to speak correctly and not use slang or dialect. Michelle says this does make her feel conflicted that she had to abandon some of her original culture.
This did surprisingly resonate with me even as a white person, I live in the West Midlands with an accent known as the Brummie accent which is seen as one of the worst in the country (and often polled as so) and there are stories I know of people in the area hiding the accent when they are away and neutralizing it for the reason of being perceived as less intelligent or affluent which can feel a bit like you are hiding who you are and where you are from.
Later on Michelle moves on to her later education at Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, Princeton and Harvard. Whitney M. Young was a high school in a far more affluent area of Chicago, as was Princeton and Harvard and Michelle describes the feeling she had of not quite fitting in at the beginning and feeling not quite good enough and even had a school careers adviser say she wasn’t “Princeton material” which I think many working class kids can resonate with, a feeling of being underestimated or seen as less than.
Whilst working as a lawyer, Michelle first meets Barack Obama and I didn’t know that Michelle was a mentor to him at Sidley & Austin law firm where she worked which was fascinating. Also seeing how their relationship blossomed and the connection the two of them have despite having sometimes polar opposite views on life is really heartwarming and Michelle details in searing honesty the challenges that they have faced, from initially being in a long-distance relationship as Barack completed his studies, to their struggle to conceive and then the growing public scrutiny as their fame grew, as well as the reality of living with a husband who was regularly away whilst she was left to raise two daughters and try to provide normalcy for them in circumstances that are so far removed from normal.
A particular section of the book that resonated with me here was when Michelle lost one of her school friends unexpectedly from cancer, Suzanne Alele and her father and how both events caused her to re-evaluate her life and move away from being a lawyer to working in public service as a similar event happened to me. I worked in online marketing until October 2024 but in 2023 I lost a family friend, one of my cousins and my Auntie Pauline which caused me to re-evaluate what I was doing with my life and realising online marketing was not something I enjoyed anymore and I was also at a similar ages.
Like Michelle, it felt very scary to come to that realisation as I had done the same job since I was 18 and on the face of it was quite good at it but a passion that I had always loved was music and teaching dance fitness so I became a Zumba instructor after enjoying playing the video games and doing online classes for a long time.
Barack’s Presidency
Eventually the book reaches 2008 and we get an inside view from Michelle as she describes the events of Barack’s presidency and what life was like behind the scenes.
One of the shocking but sadly unsurprising things was the lens of racism that hung over the entire Presidency with every decision being scrutinized in the conservative media probably more harshly than other presidents may have been. From Michelle being written off as an “angry, black woman” in early speeches, to a date night they had in New York being torn apart, something which was barely reported on in the UK but faced huge scrutiny on American media.
One incident which is mentioned involving in the UK is the hug between Michelle and our then Queen, Queen Elizabeth II in 2009. Whilst it was reported in the UK and the US as a faux pas, genuinely I think most of the British public either didn’t care or actually liked the gesture as it gave a human side to both Michelle and the Queen, something which I think the Queen seemed to lean into more in the last decade or so of her reign although that is just my personal thoughts.
Another historical moment recounted the capture of Osama Bin Laden, someone who had always been an ominous presence in American politics since 9/11 but it was fascinating to read from Michelle’s point of view the internal side of how it affects world leaders to authorize such actions.
The novel also mentions Barack’s second term in 2012 and the ominous early talk of Donald Trump running for President, something which I remember as being a bit of a joke in 2011-12 before it shockingly and unexpectedly came to fruition in 2016. However whilst the novel does detail the night Trump won, it doesn’t really detail anything that happened in the interim of his win and the inauguration.
In particular, Michelle describes how in 2008 George and Laura Bush invited them both round to dinner and Michelle recalls how she looked forward to showing the next First Lady round like Laura did to her, probably not expecting that to be Melania Trump but I was intrigued if a similar event took place when Trump won and whether anything took place which the book doesn’t really confirm or deny.
However I found the memoir to be very powerful, moving and gripping and I would highly recommend people give it a try. If you have read the memoir, let me know in the comments below what your thoughts were.
