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 … 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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With the grace, candor, kindness, and optimism she conveyed during her eight years as First Lady — and still today — I expected nothing less than the same from Michelle Obama’s memoir. But what she delivers through Becoming is that and so much more.
Starting from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago and moving through her time as a student at two ivy league universities and then as a lawyer — and Barack’s mentor, Michelle eloquently and humorously weaves her own tale, slowly adding in the characters that would become her family — Barack, Malia, Sasha, and finally Bo and Sunny.
While I love Barack, I appreciate that Michelle uses Becoming to tell her own story, including doubts and hesitations she had about her husband before and during their marriage, the difficulties of being a mother and having her children in constant spotlight, and coping with the hatred unavoidable to herself and her family.
She made me laugh, cry, and feel especially lucky that she and Barack fought — and continue to fight — so hard for our country, for those in need, for those less fortunate, and for those whose voices aren’t always heard. Five huge, teary-eyed stars for Becoming. Everyone should read this.
I could have written this review long before I was even halfway done with the story. My opinion wouldn’t have changed. It’s been a long time since I’ve read a biography/memoir and never one like this. The romance author in me adored the unexpected love story between one of my favorite couples. The student in me enjoyed the chance to reminisce as the First Lady recapped her days as a Chicago school kid before moving on to college at Princeton. The mom in me felt proud and inspired by the insights of another hardworking woman balancing the demands of child raising and career. As a working woman who lives with the frustrating realities of often being the only African American in the room, I felt encouraged. I drew strength from listening to this dynamic woman discuss the challenges of walking that fine line between being heard and not being categorized as the “angry black woman”.
“Becoming” was beyond phenomenal and I know that wording gets tossed around a lot when people (me included) rave about a story they enjoy. “Becoming” was most definitely…beyond-beyond anything I expected when I started the book. Making the story even more special was having Michelle Obama reading it herself. I have a special love for print, but I’m also a die-hard audiobook fan. Hearing The First Lady speak as I made my morning commute and having her words carry me home in the evening after a long day was a treat I’ve bragged about to friends, family, colleagues and every reader I’ve seen at my library with a copy of the work. Whether you snuggle in with print or audio, you’re sure to be inspired by this story of a rare woman, her extraordinary life, her incredible family, circle of friends and the unique and amazing man who treasures her as his wife and partner.
A frank and honest memoir that spans her own personal challenges and triumphs before meeting B. Obama, and their life together. Very well written as well.
Love. Appreciated her thoughtful introspection and her beautiful honesty. A wonderful role model for women trying to figure out how to best use their passions to positivity impact the world while also juggling their family and personal lives.
Listening to the audiobook, listening as Michelle Obama elegantly spooled out the threads of her life in elegant cascades of words around me, was a pure delight. In a memoir as apolitical as possible for someone who lived in the White House, she made me smile and get misty and believe all over again.
Michelle Obama writes her story as if she is one of your best friends, sitting with you in your kitchen, having a cup of something full of comfort. The openness of sharing her story of love, childbirth, and family with the duality of their lives in the political frying pan is both amazing and refreshing. I finished feeling that I really knew her and missed being her friend. A great story regardless of your politics.
I felt so blessed after reading Michelle Obama’s life story. I appreciated her transparency and frankness. I never would have believed I had so much in common with this incredible woman. She showed us that we all can achieve greatness.
This book is not my usual preferred genre. I’m more of a romantic happily-ever-after kind of reader (and writer). Also, like Michelle, I don’t particularly enjoy politics. I do, however, love books with feisty, smart, strong heroines, and this one definitely has that. She has lived an extraordinary life, and she hasn’t been afraid to follow her heart, even if that meant taking a bold leap off the expected path––like when she gave up her cushy high-paying attorney career path that was leading to becoming a partner in a major Chicago law firm to accept a job that offered less than half the pay, but much more fulfillment.
Oh, and spoiler alert, this book features a heartwarming romance with a happily-ever-after ending!
First Lady Michelle Obama takes you behind the scenes of the White House and gives you a glimpse of what it’s like for a mother who’s raising her young daughters under high security and public scrutiny.
It was interesting to learn how much she worried about her daughters not having a normal childhood. One very poignant moment in the book was when she wanted to see her oldest daughter play tennis. Not wanting to make a scene with all the Secret Service detail around her, she sat in a limo beside the courts and watched her from afar.
This book is full of interesting tidbits about how Mrs. Obama met her husband, and how she had to change from being around her very warm, loving family to being isolated in the White House. Among many of her projects were starting a garden, encouraging children to be healthy, and dedicating her time and energy to helping military families.
This is an enjoyable read, chocked full of fascinating information.
I took a break from mysteries over the recent holidays to read Michelle Obama’s memoir. And I’m very glad I did. Not to get political, but even if readers aren’t a current fan, it’s a book definitely worth checking out. I felt as though I was sitting in her kitchen sharing coffee with her while she told me about her life. Much of it, the public part, I thought I already knew. But I was wrong. The words are carefully chosen and the writing is exquisite.
Outstanding! I loved this intimate portrait of Michelle Obama’s life. I enjoyed reading about her childhood in Chicago and how she pushed to do well and to be recognized. I enjoyed reading about her work life and her quest to become involved in activities that were more fulfilling and meaningful. I enjoyed learning about how she met Barack Obama, and how they slowly found out more and more about each other, and how they always depended on each other. While this book wasn’t about Barack Obama, it still gave you a sense of how intelligent and thoughtful and kind he is.
I also enjoyed how Michelle Obama cherished her role as mother, and how she fiercely protected her children. I loved how she carefully considered how her actions would be construed (or misconstrued) and what that would mean. I loved how she described her life in the White House and the initiatives she undertook, and why they were so important to her.
Michelle Obama is an incredible woman, and her story is inspiring.
#Becoming #MichelleObama #HighlyRecommend
Michelle Obama’s memoir interested me on many levels. It was fascinating to see how complex life became once her husband became, first, a serious presidential contender, and then, the president. She says that nothing can prepare you for a position which very few people have held. When the man with the nuclear football shows up, that makes things very real. The incredible limitations of life in the White House were both funny and mind-boggling.
But the book also reminded me of the struggles women had and still have in balancing our careers, our families, and our spouse’s careers. It’s good to remember that the struggle hasn’t gone away. During my formative years (when I also attended to Princeton University), women were told they could have it and do it all. Michele Obama received the same message. But we learned the hard lesson that our society’s structure doesn’t really allow that. Choices must be made.
Finally, BECOMING showed me once again what a smart, strong woman Michelle Obama is.
A refreshing, honest look at a tough job, that of First Lady.
This book is NOT POLITICAL. I say that in all caps, right at the start, because this is not a partisan book, as in blue versus red. Michelle Obama’s Becoming is the story of a woman’s quest to find herself. It is universal and not to be missed.
For starters, the writing is beautiful. Yes, the acknowledgment page names people who helped with the writing, but I can’t hold that against the author. She took creative writing courses at Princeton, nothing to sneeze at. And the ideas here, the content, is hers alone.
Typically, when listening to an audiobook, I avoid those read by the author. Some authors seem driven by ego to think they can play different parts in a book as well as a professional reader. I’ve listened to a few author-read samples that are perfectly awful. Becoming is an exception for several reasons. First, being a memoir, the story’s voice is Mrs. Obama. Second, she knows the story and feels every line. Third, her voice is mellifluous, as in lyrical and pleasant to hear.
I would have edited down some of the childhood detail at the start, but the pace soon picks up and is spot on. Mrs. Obama agonizes over the demands of a legal career, over the pull-and-tug of being a working woman raising children, over the angst of ceding her independence when her husband chose to run for higher office. Though I’m neither black nor the wife of a US President, I identified with her deeply.
Last fall, when I posted a shot of Becoming in my TBR pile, several women commented that they refused to go anywhere near this book. It’s their loss. Truly.
Michelle Robinson was raised in the South side of Chicago by loving parents who supported her in graduating from both Princeton and Harvard, before moving into the world of corporate law where she mentored Barack Obama and they fell in love.
In this well written and powerful memoir she shares how her father suffered from MS and although it became a struggle, he never shied away from work as a water pump operator. Her mother remained a stay at home mum encouraging both Michelle and her brother Craig on their life’s journey.
She recounts the challenges she faced in becoming a mother to her two daughters Malia and Sasha, and the struggles to maintain a balance between work and motherhood as she moved into community based law.
Once Barack’s political career blossomed life brought a different set of challenges, and Michelle shares how she coped with bigotry, media comments on her fashion sense, her body shape, her facial expressions…
Despite these and many other challenges she writes from her heart of the visits she made to military hospitals, sharing hugs with many people in pain, including parents who had lost family to shootings.
The first project she set up in The White House and a cause close to my heart, was the creation of an edible garden, inviting children to help in its creation and to learn the importance of healthy eating.
Meeting the Queen and Nelson Mandela were just two of the highlights shared with her readers, while many low points were equally candid.
I finished this book feeling hugely impressed by Michelle and Barack’s dignity of character, and the sheer amount of hard work they endured in aspiring to make the world a better place.
The final paragraph is particularly powerful:
“It’s not about being perfect. It’s not about where you get yourself in the end. There’s power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice. And there’s grace in being willing to know and hear others. This, for me, is how we become.”
This was the first autobiography I’ve ever read, so I don’t know how to compare it to others, but I LOVED it. Every single word, on every single page. And that from someone who tends to skim through the boring bits in many books.
Living in Australia I saw the Obama’s in the news, of course, but I hadn’t followed them all that closely. I hadn’t felt a need to—after all, they were doing a great job. They were a highly respected first family, doing America proud. I saw the important bits, the bits that Australian media felt worthy of a spot on the evening news, but not a lot more. And although I listened to Barack’s 3 hour speech at the Nelson Mandela centenary celebration, I didn’t know all that much about Michelle even at that stage.
But in reading her book, I feel like I’ve come to know her. I learned so much about what a wonderful human being she is … the hard work and perseverance that got her into Princeton, the long hours she spent as a lawyer trying to prove and better herself, and then, when she’d made it to the top, her constant efforts to make the world a better place … for her own daughters as well as everyone else’s.
There was even one point, towards the end of the book, when I read about how she’d done Carpool Karaoke, and why. So of course I went to YouTube and watched it right away, and it made the whole experience so much more personal… almost like I was right there in the car with her.
Anyway, I loved the book, and would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to read about her life, her background, small snippets of what it was like living in the White House, and her hopes for the future. She’s an inspiring woman, and she makes me feel both proud and hopeful.
Michelle Obama did a stellar job of narrating her life story. A thousand emotions came through her voice and her words. It felt like we sat together and chatted throughout the book. Beyond that, I could relate to so much of what she talked about. It didn’t seem like I was reading about a distant, inaccessible First Lady; it felt like I was having an intimate conversation with a good friend from high school. From career and motherhood dreams to hopes and wishes about what the world could be, from missed opportunities–hers because of race and mine because of disability–to uncertainties about what we wanted out of life, we were just two women on the same page. Then again, it was lots of fun hearing about the ins and outs of what it was like living in the White House. Who wouldn’t be interested in that? I was a bit daunted about the length of the book when I started it, but I couldn’t put it down once I plunged in.
I have found books written by first ladies to be very revealing. Whether the first lady is married to a president or a pastor. Their books provide a more personal glimpses on what happens behind closed doors.
I’m not going to say I ran to the book store for this one or pre-ordered it like millions of others. I knew I wanted to read this because of the amount of hype it was gaining even before it was released. Now with over 3 millions copies being sold since publishing on November 13, I’m pretty grateful my Atlanta Social Club chose Michelle Obama’s book Becoming for our December book club.
Becoming is the autobiographical memoir of former United States First Lady Michelle Obama. It starts, well, at the beginning, as a young girl growing up in Chicago’s South Side. I’m not going to lie the reason I didn’t give this book five stars was because of how slow the beginning was. While it is interesting to get the back story of Michelle growing up and going to school, her friends, her family. But the years of Michelle growing up dragged on so much.
Now, many others would say that Michelle’s upbringing, going to school where she did, the language she used, her parents raising her and her brother the way they did, formed her into the woman she turned out to be with Barack Obama and also who she is now. All I can say from a critical point is, I desperately wanted to race ahead to when Michelle made it to Princeton and then got a job in Chicago as an attorney.
So, once I got to the part of the book I was most anxiously waiting for, I couldn’t put it down. The minute Michelle starts describing when she first meets Barack and how “cool” he is, I literally lit up and couldn’t stop smiling. I found their relationship described as timid at first but then blossomed into what the entire world would see for eight years under his administration. Above all what struck me was Michelle’s description of Barack, let me add more than once, as a “unicorn.” Take that in people, Michelle described our once two term President of the United States Barack Obama as a freaking unicorn–adorable!
As a political news junkie, I engulfed all the chapters where Michelle is describing Barack deciding to go into politics, first as a senator and then later on as a presidential candidate. As a journalist, and having gone to Obama’s headquarters in 2012 when he was running for reelection, I found it so captivating and couldn’t hope to get into the more scandalous bits once in the White House.
One part that I couldn’t help but bring up about this book was Michelle being a highly educated woman, who at her prime was an administrator at a hospital taking charge and raising two young children, but then she was the ultimate decider on whether Barack would and could run for President. That meant she had to stop everything she was working on, her role as someone with power and making a difference in her community, thus having to put that aside so Barack could run for office. Her life then and forever will be changed. She will never be able to go back to a life where she had such a large role in a working environment. This to me was so eye-opening because she sacrificed so much so Barack could make a difference in the United States and she can’t really go back to the life she had worked so hard to make for herself.
There’s one section in the book that will forever haunt me like no other and that’s the accounts of mass shootings and shootings in general in the United States. Michelle decided not to join the President when he went to Sandy Hook for the service saying she was, “too shaken by it and that (she) had no strength available to lend.” But soon after this, the death of a Chicago honor student Hadiya Pendleton happened. She was a bright young girl who also participated in the President’s second inauguration in her school’s marching band. But this young black girl from Chicago was gunned down standing under a bus stop. She and her friends were mistaken as gang members. Michelle decided to attend Hadiya Pendleton’s funeral writing:
My hope was that my presence would help turn the gaze towards the many innocent kids being gunned down in city streets almost every day…Hadiya Pendleton came from a close-knit, working-class South Side family, much like my own.
Michelle was there first and foremost as a native of Chicago’s South Side, and second as the First Lady of the United States.
I leave you readers with the fact that if you haven’t read this book, you need to either go get it for yourself from a book store or get the audible version, which I hear is actually done by Michelle herself! I found this extremely well written and it gives the public a glimpse into someone who I feel made such a tremendous impact on the United States under the Obama administration. I cannot wait to see what Michelle has up her sleeve for her future, along wither her husband, President Obama. If for nothing else, all politics not put aside, you can get a good laugh when she talks about Donald Trump and Melania Trump!
Read more of my review here: https://bit.ly/2RrJ4Gs
I don’t think I’ve ever read an autobiography before. This makes me not truly capable of saying with certainty, this was the perfect place to start. I still feel certain Michelle Obama’s BECOMING was the perfect place to start. Frank. Smart. Deep. Life is life and thus I found myself fighting tears at many times while reading this, just weeping at others. And then I’d be laughing. Or anxious. It was written incredibly well, hard to put down. This is an extraordinary woman and I very much enjoyed getting to know her better.
Something I really gained from this book is that it doesn’t really matter what your political beliefs or adherents are, you can probably fairly safely view people as just people and that so, so many people are good at their core. Growing up with in very opinionated and highly conservative home, I was basically taught that all Democrats are evil. But this book proves, refreshingly, that isn’t true. As an adult I’ve developed my own opinions and don’t rely on the opinions of my parents or their friends any longer to make my choices, but I sometimes still find the mental hitch happening when politics comes into a conversation. (That said, this review is not meant to become a political discussion and I’m not interested in engaging in one.)
What I loved about this book is that Michelle proves, more than once, that people of different political views can agree and work together and that people with the same political views can become rivals. That how we view people has so much more to do with us than them. And, again, that so many people are just good people really trying to do their best in a flawed world with flawed people.
My respect for the Obama family grew a lot in the reading of this book. I especially respect and admire how important it was to Michelle and Barack that their girls have as normal a life as possible despite their home address. I thought it was amazing they instituted changes for their girls with how the Secret Service handled their security; having dinner together as a family as many nights as possible; being home when they got home from school; putting them in “regular” schools; encouraging friends, play dates, and social events with friends—even going to prom!; and attending their games and events. As a believer in the importance of family, it struck me as wonderful that they worked so hard to make sure their girls were most important.
I also admire Michelle’s drive for the things she is obviously passionate about. I loved reading her perspectives about the initiatives she spearheaded during her time as First Lady. I loved the garden, the push for girl’s education globally, the care of military and family, the empowerment of teaching women that they have a place and a voice in this world. I loved that she attended high commencements of high schools not well known. I love that she talked to kids from high-crime areas. I love that she sought out people who didn’t always get support. I love that she chose to use her voice and prominence to reach out to the ignored, the minority, the misunderstood, and tried to encourage love, patience, and understanding. I also love that she didn’t let her title get to her head. It seems she stayed pretty humble through the entirety of her husband’s presidency. If ignorance kept me from it before, I’m officially a Michelle Obama fan.
It’s a good book. I enjoyed it immensely. As of this moment, it will make my list of top five favorites of the year.
AUDIOBOOK REVIEW: Read by the author—I stand by my assertion that books read by their authors, if not actors or trained in voice over, speak too slowly to make listening to them anything less than painful. I’m certain Michelle doesn’t talk like that in real life but the audiobook is dreadfully slow.