Becoming by Michelle Obama – Book Review and Commentary

Can a Black woman really have it all?

Michelle Robinson was an around the way girl with strong Black parents in a small upper apartment in Southside Chicago. What was her destiny supposed to be? 

Her parents poured all of their love, light, and wisdom into her and her older brother Craig. Because of that, the two saw themselves at Ivy Leagues such as Princeton and Harvard – playing basketball professionally overseas to investment banking to corporate law. In Michelle Robinson’s case, a high-end office on the forty-seventh floor in Downtown Chicago. In the same building she used to see through the bus windows on her way to school many years prior. Am I good enough? is her constant mantra throughout the memoir, and through all of its twists and turns, it makes you really think. How does one become good enough? 

Becoming is a very intimate memoir, filled with all of the stories and insights we never knew we needed. Michelle toils with life as a Black woman with hefty career ambitions, a desire for children, a husband whose presence is larger than life, and finding solace within herself in a society that claims you can’t have it all. But did Michelle find the secret? 

Michelle Robinson was a self-proclaimed box-checker. She wanted to ascend to the very top of the most “impressive” career. She had a careful plan, neatly folded into the seams of her life as she describes it. Until “a Black man with an odd name” came in “like a wind threatening to unsettle everything.” 

This was the most accurate description of love. Love is like the strong wind that comes out of nowhere on a sunny day.  And when it hits you, you wonder if there was ever life that beautiful before as you look around – for the first time – to see where it’s coming from only to see the beautiful horizon and vibrant colors. You realize that for the first time in your life that success in the way you’ve created thus far doesn’t mean a thing. 

She watched a man who had the highest, uninhibited faith in the works in which he was passionate. There was no need for him to impress anyone as she viewed him. As her own life unfolded, she saw that being a lawyer wasn’t the end for her. That her success was only a version and that there were many versions of it. 

So Michelle Obama took a pay cut, began doing more community work, and eventually got some satisfaction in the most interesting ways. She had her date nights, her passions, her own life. 

It wasn’t until she realized her soon-to-be husband was taking an irreversible dive into politics that she had to come to grips with the fact that the life she had envisioned – or even some version of it – would not come to pass. 

To me, this book was a breath of fresh air. Michelle Obama never let go of her straight-to-the-point honesty, even in the midst of being thrust head-first into politics. 

The frustration of living a life you wouldn’t have chosen for yourself seems palpable; her disdain for politics reaches you at any given chance. She fell in love with a man whose life wasn’t surrounded by the preconceived notions of being successful while Black; he simply existed. And in her experiences with a free-spirited Jamaican Princeton best friend and roommate, she began to realize what it meant to exist and simply be in a different way. That there was no right way to live. I humbly believe that’s why – even in the midst of her disgust and let’s be honest, lack of choice – she pushed on and gave politics a fair shot. 

Michelle Obama wasn’t one to pout, complain, or drone on about how “woe is me.” She never did that. She always found her light in any given situation. When reading this, you realize that we’ve all probably done crazier for love, and that perspective really is the key to understanding each other. I love that sentiment Michelle lends to her readers.

She is using this work to serve as a catalyst for change. To really take a moment to understand one another, even with our own fears and preconceived notions. Although her life was an up and down adventure she couldn’t have checked in a box, that’s what made her whole. That is her story; that’s how she became Michelle Obama, and how she reckoned with her fate. 

She took every situation in her life and conquered it with courage. There were the many doubts we all have: as women, Black people, millennials/Gen Z, parents, college students, political figures, symbols. She was insecure and believed that this world was a competition to be won. From the delicate age of four when she was trying to pronounce all of the colors correctly, only to stumble and freeze up on the word “white.” Or that fateful day as she applied for colleges, with Princeton at the top of her list. Her brother had made it there after all. Just to hear that she wasn’t good enough. 

Her college counselor fixed her lips to tell her that she wasn’t “Princeton material.” The nerve. In this instance, you as a reader really come to grips with just how strong her foundation was growing up with two strong-minded Black parents and a protective, smart and charismatic older brother. You were seen – when no one else saw you because you were Black and a woman. And it was because she saw herself that she left with us with the sentiment that failure starts in the mind. “It is a feeling long before it is an actual result,” she reflects.

And so she made it to Ivy League life, never fazed by predominantly White and male spaces. Always capable of her abilities because her and her brother had been her parents’ investment. You can tell how much this drives Michelle Obama to do all of the high-achieving things kids from her block just didn’t do: to work corporate and have a wine subscription service and go to law school at Harvard. And why didn’t we?

I understood Michelle Obama when she said she had to check all the boxes to feel successful, especially as a Black woman. What she realizes later down the line that none of what she did ever truly made her feel whole, but it made her who she is today. 

In terms of her marriage, the whirlwind of their romance knocks you off your feet. They are literally polar opposites: she is pragmatic, plays it safe, traditional, calm, community-oriented and loves routine. And Barack? Well, he’s a free-spirited, fiercely independent, introspective, risk-taking and has no interest in the mundane routine of material life. For some reason, though, they just work, and I loved that about how she describes him. He was fire; she was ice. It just works. And you can feel her love exuding from the pages, and just how much she admires this man. 

She made the ultimate sacrifice as becoming the first Black woman to become First Lady and become a national and international symbol for Black American exceptionalism. Trust, there were many detailed sacrifices she had to make to fill into a role that she constantly fretted had no job description. What she did was make her own role and create an extension of herself through that; she evolved. She used her situation as a positive, using her position as a role model to Black women and women of color to reach mass audiences and insight global change. Michelle turned the position of being a First Lady from looking pretty to becoming a powerhouse.

It’s no wonder why many challenged Michelle’s presence as the First Lady, lowering themselves to insults toward her gender, her body, or her demeanor. There was never anything wrong with any of that, but she had to make adjustments to her perception and just as much how she was perceived, but not herself; there was power in that.

That light exudes from her when you see her in the photos throughout the book, and it will exude when you read this memoir. Try as they may, Michelle Obama is truly unbothered over the long-term. 

Michelle Obama acknowledges too that one of the major reasons for her choosing to go all the way with her husband is because she saw a change in America that was going to be bigger than her. America in 2008 needed Obama. With annoying difficulty from a majority Republican Senate and Congress, Barack prospered and inspired millions. Was it, then, really a sacrifice or simply a hard decision? 

When the rollercoaster of the White House does come to a close, you realize just how many sacrifices she and her husband made together as a team: losing time with their children and not being able to do the things normal parents get to do (go to their games, their first day, etc), going to therapy for their marriage that got caught in a “knot,” getting taunted by a downright spiteful Senate whose sole mission was to “make Obama a one-term president,” and attempting to do the impossible for the ungrateful. In all their efforts and sleepless nights, they still have people who rain down on them because they didn’t do enough or they were just like the other presidents. To hell with them all. Michelle Obama in this memoir gives us perspective, and we Americans desperately need it. And maybe those two weren’t enough, but Michelle’s humility shows just that: that change doesn’t happen over a few years, but “over lifetimes.” 

Am I good enough? She asks herself countless times through the novel as she faces her new life hurdle, and what starts as a genuine insecurity as an adolescent becomes rhetorical as a woman, as she begins to answer the sentence with Yes, I am.

Her honesty was candid and one of the things I loved most. Her personality was able to shine through gloriously. She is a very calm and collected individual. Most haven’t been able to read her personality over the years, but I think that’s the point. From a reader’s point of view, she isn’t an emotional person per se. That is, she isn’t ruled by emotions, but by action and logic. That’s not to say she doesn’t have any, because she portrayed them flawlessly to the point of making me jolt back in my seat at times. Rather, she just is who she is and if it makes sense to her, she won’t have a problem. She’s honest, sensible, and good-natured while acknowledging her flaws. Ultimately, she minds her business and does her best in a straightforward manner, and it translates well with her writing.

The storytelling in this memoir is worth every penny. I felt immersed into the life of Michelle Robinson, and more than that, I felt intrigued. She made such a seemingly normal story of humble beginnings seem so bright, filled with so much light. Her transition into love with a “Black man with an odd name” who she considers the yang to her yin really allowed me to appreciate the essence of not only love, but Black love. Her work as Michelle Obama was and still is inspiring. Her – as herself – is a story worthy of recognition because she recognizes that she’s just like everyone else: normal. She simply understands that her story “is hers to own.” That her story made and molded her. 

So, can you have it all? Well, with an intimate reading into the life of Michelle Obama, you can get a glimpse of what that may (or may not) look like. You’ll see that balance really is all mental and sometimes the best sacrifice is putting yourself first. That sometimes the art of compartmentalizing really just takes time, and to see that life is what you make of it. Don’t worry about changing the world, change yourself first. 

Who will you become in this life, and how has your story made you thus far? I believe this book is a great start for Black women looking to pick up their pen and re-write their life in a society that tried to write them off. Our stories are ours to own. Here’s to becoming. Becoming fierce, becoming woman, becoming me. 

This book found purchased here.  (Not sponsored)

Note from the writer: I felt her grief as she dealt with untimely passings and empathized to the highest degree. My grandpa who, as with my grandma, raised me from the time I was born. 

My grandpa was also very sick and prideful and worked until his very last breath. When I asked him how he was feeling – which was a lot – he almost always said I’m okay or I feel good. He was so strong and I couldn’t believe how sick he was until it was almost his time to go. And by then, it was too late. Reading about Michelle Obama’s father and her struggling to force him to do better and go to the doctor was like paralleling with my own life as a Black daughter.

He recently passed at the end of September. He was my King, our rock and taught me the true value of work and sacrifice. Like Michelle’s father, I was his investment. I couldn’t help but get incredibly emotional hearing about the passings in her family and how hard it is in particular when you have to see your Black male relatives go. It was a true moment to see Michelle’s vulnerability, and man did I need it. You know these Black men in your life – they work hard, and give up everything for family, or at least try to. And for no full satisfaction of their own. It’s just heartbreaking. And beautiful. And everything. Thank you Michelle Obama, for this glorious memoir. 

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