Becoming by Michelle Obama

SYNOPSIS:

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.

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I’ve read the Romanian version of the book, Povestea mea translated by Corina Hadareanu

Genre: Biography

Page count: 448 (Romanian version), 426 (English Hardcover version)

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

me: *screaming through a megaphone and a microphone* I LOVE MICHELLE OBAMA SHE’S MY PRESIDENT

I am not even American LOL but I’d still vote for Michelle at pretty much anything to be completely honest.

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BACK TO THE ACTUAL REVIEW…

There is not much I could discuss this book, because everything I could possibly say lays already between the pages of this book, so I would make this quick because this is the most important idea of my review: I LOVE MICHELLE OBAMA, thanks for coming to my TED Talk, have a fine day.

This book is a biography and it seems to me so not fair to give anything less than five stars to this type of books because hello, this is the real life of real individuals and who am I to judge other people’s lives? I am a no-one whatsoever because those people made something important with their lives and I sit here quietly in my corner and read about them. Feeling pretty bad about myself but who cares? I love reading about other people’s life (don’t judge me though I know you love that too!).

Becoming is the complex road Life chose for Michelle to go to and the story of how she became who she is now: a woman of integrity, loved by so many and who inspires towards kind purposes in life. Michelle is a superhero of a nation. But she is just so much more than that. She is a normal person with normal habits, dreams and aspirations, with a ludic nature and a nice sense of humour. She’s a fabulous mother to her daughters, a fabulous wife and friend to her husband, a fabulous daughter to her parents. 

It all starts with the normal childhood of a normal girl who used to live on the south side of the big city of Chicago. This little girl wanted to achieve great things in life, to be someone, to have a high-paid job and to be respected and she worked hard every single school day of her life to achieve that. But once she achieved it, she realised that not this is important in life. She met Barack Obama who turned her world upside down with his own unique and selfless aspirations and vision of the world and she felt in that moment an emptiness in her life that sooner would be filled with her love for Barack and her will to help others make a difference in the world.

The book is constructed around three main let’s call them chapters in Michelle’s life:

• Becoming Me – The ladder Michelle climbed towards meeting her goals set as a child to the woman she is today;
• Becoming Us – The beauty and the miracle the family is and the story of her own path through her marriage with her other half and meeting the wonders and complexities of motherhood together with her two daughters, Malia and Sasha;
• Becoming More – About everything that is beyond all the things she achieved until that point, about learning compassion, about exploring the unknown, about helping consolidate a better world.

Michelle Obama inspires. Maybe she doesn’t realise it. Or maybe she does. She talks about things that bother her, raising an alarm to the rest of the world. Talking about racism, feminism, health issues, poverty, even peace, Michelle inspires with her words because if she likes it or not, her words weigh.

I cannot tell you in words how much I appreciate and I respect Michelle Obama as the person she is, not only as a personality. She found a way of being that supermum she ever dreamt of being, also having a carrier and also managing to raise her children into being beautiful human beings. She found a way to help people in need, to lend a hand to those who asked for help, to say a kind word to those who lost hope, to help preserve humanity and spread the love. And she did all these things while also finding time to laugh and feel good, to dance around and sing and sneak around like a teenage girl and be happy about miraculous things.

I take off my hat for this incredible, real-life Wonder Woman and I take the liberty to say only this: even though I have no direct connection whatsoever with anything this woman has ever done in her life, I just feel the need to say THANK YOU MICHELLE LAVAUGHN ROBINSON OBAMA FOR EVERYTHING YOU’VE DONE FOR THIS WORLD AND THANK YOU FOR INSPIRING A NEW GENERATION! Thank you for inspiring me. I owe you one in heaven (supposing that I even get there LOL).