Becoming

by Michelle Obama

Paper Book, 2018

Status

Available

Call number

BIOGRAPHY Obama, M.

Barcode

10233

Genres

Publication

New York : Crown, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, [2018]

Description

Biography & Autobiography. African American Nonfiction. Nonfiction. HTML:An intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER � WATCH THE EMMY-NOMINATED NETFLIX ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY � OPRAH�S BOOK CLUB PICK � NAACP IMAGE AWARD WINNER � ONE OF ESSENCE�S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS 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.… (more)

Media reviews

The New Yorker

The summary of Obama’s White House initiatives relies on promotional language and well-worn anecdotes, and the book’s final pages are just a shade away from an overt advertisement for the Obama Foundation. The memoir’s “bombshell” revelations, which the media has projected as revelations

of the female condition writ large—a discussion of Obama’s use of fertility treatment to conceive her daughters, and of a period of her marriage in which “frustrations began to rear up often and intensely”—belie how much the rest of the text withholds.

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Vanity Fair

I suspect that some of Becoming’s power lies in the ways it employs the techniques of a novel more than those of a typical political memoir—in its honesty about human nature and ambivalence, yes, but also in its colorful and idiosyncratic details ... in its willingness to let anecdotes speak

for themselves rather than pedantically spelling out their lessons.

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The Guardian

Becoming is frequently funny, sometimes indignant or enraged, and when Michelle describes her father’s early death from multiple sclerosis it turns rawly emotional.

Vanity Fair

But despite how close we get to her voice here, it’s never quite close enough. She lets us into all kinds of memories, including tender recollections, romantic dates, and triumphant moments on the campaign trail. But for all her candidness, there is still a veil of privacy around the inner

workings of this reluctant public figure. She draws the reader in, but pauses at arm’s length. Maybe this is all we can expect, in text, from this woman with so much presence. As she says herself, she’s more of a hugger.

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Vox

Even if Becoming is not always interesting, it is much more interesting than it needed to be to qualify as a successful first lady memoir. And as an example of how to walk the tightrope — how to seem charming but not like an intellectual lightweight; how to get things done without seeming

threatening; how to do all of the impossible things we demand of women in general, of first ladies in particular, and of the first black first lady as an absolute — Becoming is a straight-up master class.

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The Atlantic

Becoming is still a political memoir; it functions partly to solidify Barack Obama’s legacy as a complex and multilayered milestone for the country. The book makes the case for the Obama family as definitively American, for Michelle Obama’s concerns as worries that derive from the universal

anxieties of marriage and motherhood. Still, Becoming is satisfying for the quiet moments in which Mrs. Obama, the woman who supported a black man named Barack all the way to the presidency, gets to let down her hair and breathe as Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, girl of the South Side.

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Entertainment Weekly

Her honesty translates. More importantly, her intention translates, to remind her country of what’s being lost — what she witnessed during the Obama years, what guided their presidency: “a sense of progress, the comfort of compassion…. A glimmer of the world as it could be.” May decency

reign again.

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National Public Radio (NPR)

But mirroring the constraints of what she could do and say as first lady, she is also restrained in her writing here. She doesn't question the world of the White House here the way she thoughtfully appraises 1970s South Side Chicago. And while Obama is clearly passionate about her top causes as

first lady, such as gardening with kids and meeting veterans' families, ultimately this is a section where Obama seems most like any politician, lapsing far more often into the policy speak that peppered the early chapters. Which is to say: This is where her protective walls seem to go up. The question is how miffed to get about this. On the one hand, Michelle Obama, like any former first lady, doesn't owe us any juicy details about her life. On the other hand, she is writing a memoir here, complete with a nationwide book tour.

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