Book Reflection: Becoming Michelle Obama — by Michelle Obama
This book is about Michelle’s confession and introspection, her highs and lows, hopes and fears, and her growth that entangles with her partner Barack Obama, the Southside of Chicago, and the country as a whole. Her candid voice elicits so many emotions that when she talks to you through her writings, she is not any First Lady who wants to be put on the pedestal, but a real person with flesh and blood, who makes mistakes and has blonde moments.
One thing that stood out to me throughout the book was that Michelle dealt with lots of self-doubt in her early career, which was only intensified during Obama’s first presidential campaign. Being a well-performing student who is fast-talking, enunciative, knowledgable, and ambitious, Michelle was mocked by her peers for “pretending that she’s not black enough.”
Later in the book, she described her apprehension of derailing from a legal career to realign her work with passion, her incertitude of Barack’s presidential campaign, her competency as Barack’s campaign mate, and more. It is hard going uphill. What was inspiring to me is that she never let self-doubt define herself but collected every instinct to battle against it. When she worked arduously and was finally accepted to an entirely white-dominant college Princeton, the twenty-year-old felt the touch of defiance, considering herself a “representative of alternative.”
The feeling of self-doubt Michelle had to grapple with, however, is not an “ordinary person”’s misgiving in everyday life. In the racial context of America, if Michelle was white, she might not need as much validation to assure her self-worth. To me, Michelle unconsciously inherited her grandfather’s shadow of a crumbled American dream. Being a black immigrant in the 50s, he failed to secure formal employment to save the money for the long-desired college education. Michelle correctly pointed out the deep weariness in the black community — a “cynicism bred from a thousand small disappointments over time.”
Reading between the lines, I could tell that Michelle was not optimistic like Barack. She has many reasons to be cynical about the system she’s part of, and her path was not uncommon. “Becoming Michelle” did not take any secret sauce. If anything, Michelle talked about her hard work and the “persistent love” she received in her childhood, the key ingredients in life that reoriented her insecurities from impeding her own growth.
In the second part of the book “Becoming Us,” Michelle’s struggle around self-doubt has been both alleviated and highlighted by the presence of Barack Obama in her life. Barack inspired and challenged her. Above all, Barack loved her unconditionally. When Michelle faced widespread criticism because of Barack’s campaign opponent’s vicious use of video clips that took her words out of context, Barack listened and embraced her tear and fear. He never asked her to be a political character and fight for his beliefs. In reality, Michelle was loathful of politics. She did it for her love for Barack and her compassion for the people beyond her family that she later came to realize. But in the meantime, Michelle felt another kind of self-doubt, one that is more profound. In the very first chapter of “Becoming Us,” she talked about her deep passion for Barack, a guy “whose forceful intellect and ambition could possibly end up swallowing mine.”
Following this monologue, Michelle described how Barack sensitively addressed her unsettling feeling by encouraging her to follow her passion and join a non-profit foundation whose mission aligns with hers. Even so, later in her journey as a wife, as a mother of two children, and as Barack’s campaign mate, Michelle’s feeling of being dissolved in the background of Barack’s high-rising ambition for the country would sometimes (actually, more than often) reoccur. Throughout the family’s rise in politics, Michelle seems to be always clearheaded about what she has given up, what she is to sacrifice, and for what causes. She did not complain about Barack’s rare home visits during the four-month campaign trip. In the meantime, she remained honest about her vulnerability when Malia had a fever during their urgent return from vacation for a last-minute Senate debate Barack must attend. She did not want to be alone in such an emergency, and she wanted Barack to put their family first. So he did.
This particular story touched my heart, and it is why I found her self-doubt more profound when it comes to her role in the context of “Becoming Us.” If it was not Barack, or if he chose not to see and listen to her, Michelle might have become another woman who was sidelined and whose needs were sacrificed for her significant other’s professional “aspiration.” Also, the tension in their relationship engendered from the different paces in personal development is not uncommon among couples. There is really no secret to “Becoming Michelle and Barack.” If anything, the couple has always stayed honest and empathetic with each other. They chose to prioritize the love for the family in order to love the community and the country better. So they did.
Michelle’s autobiography is filled with heartfelt anecdotes. In the epilogue, she told us the true tale of “Becoming Michelle Obama.” She told us that “for every door that’s been opened to me, I’ve tried to open my door to others. “It’s not about being perfect” — it’s about “allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story while being willing to know and hear others.”
Today we face a vast amount of opportunities inconceivable to the last generation. We often feel that we have exceeded the expectations set by our family and neighbors, the feeling of having outgrown our family, our hometown, and the places we live. Michelle’s voice is authentic because she sees herself as a daughter, a wife, and a mom before the First Lady. She didn’t forget her tiny apartment in the Southside of Chicago: her father who taught her to work hard and laugh often, or her mother who showed her how to think for herself and use her voice. She did not sugarcoat or downplay her effort to Become Michelle in the Southside of Chicago, in Princeton, or the White House. Her story offers solace for dreamers and lovers like myself. Sometimes I care too much about creating legacies and what others have to say about my achievements. Michelle would say, “even when it’s not pretty or perfect, even when it’s more real than you want it to be, your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own.”
Favorite quotes:
“Fulfillment, I’m sure, struck her as a rich person’s conceit. I doubt that my parents, in their thirty years together, had even once discussed it.”
“If you drew too much heat, you bore a certain risk. But then again, Barack Was a black man. The risk, for him, was nothing new.”
“Hillary’s gender was used against her relentlessly, drawing from all the worst stereotypes. She was called domineering, a nap, a bitch. Her voice was interpreted as screechy; her laugh was a cackle. Hillary was Barack’s opponent, which meant that I wasn’t inclined to feel especially warmly towards her just then, but I couldn’t help but admire her ability to stand up and keep fighting amid the misogyny.”
“It seemed that my clothes mattered more to people than anything I had to say.”
“When it came to the home-for-dinner dilemma, I installed new boundaries, ones that worked better for me and the girls…. this made so much more sense than holding off dinner or having the girls wait up sleepily for a hug. It went back to my wishes for them to grow up strong and centered and also unaccommodating to any form of old-school patriarchy: I didn’t want them ever to believe that life began when the man of the house arrived home. We didn’t wait for Dad. It Was his job now to catch up with us.”
“The important parts of y story, I was realizing, lay less in the surface value of my accomplishments and more iN what undergirded them — the many small ways I’d been buttressed over the years, and the people who’d helped build my confidence over time. I remember them all, every person who’d ever waved me forward, doing his or her best to inoculate me against the slights and indignities I was certain to encounter in the places I was headed — all those environments built primarily for and by people who were neither black nor female.”