Becoming, by MICHELLE OBAMA
“Unlike me, it seemed they could actually afford to be there, their virtue discreetly underwritten by
privilege” Obama uses (page 70) to describe the fellow young college graduates chomping at the bit
to work for well-renowned non-profit organisations that paid pennies.
She had to work, she’s always had to work.
And for more than they, the non-profit, offered. So, though the opportunity
was unparalleled, the [lack of] money was a dealbreaker. She did not have the luxury of choice and
she explains this by showing us the circumstances she grew up in and around. The south side of
Chicago was an education for a young impressionable girl. Michelle Obama walks us through it.
I love the complexities she implies, without explaining them all, about how her life as a First Lady
and a Feminist were often at odds with each other. Her first duty as First Lady was to make sure
Barack looked good in the public eye. Literally, she had to make a man look good, despite the fact
that she loved him and was proud of him, she was now boxed into this role of a classic anti-feminist
woman. She shines the light on having to blanket her accomplishments to bring more attention to
his achievements and endeavours, by no fault of his but by virtue of the nature of her role.
What I enjoyed the most, perhaps because I, as an African American woman, can acknowledge the
deceit in it, is how she has often had to misrepresent herself into the ideal example of the
“American dream” to be the First Lady her husband needed.
And the cringe worthy, strengthening parts were those were she calmly, plainly describes how the
public weaponised her blackness against her despite her best efforts to shine.
The medium pace and soft flow of her overall story delivers the information evenly and not as
abrasive as the narrative of a black author retelling injustices and discrimination. I believe she
deliberately does this to make her book more palatable to a wider audience…beyond who she knew
would read it.
“The rumours and slanted commentary always carried less than subtle messaging about race,
meant to stir up the deepest and ugliest kind of fear within the voting public. Don’t let the black
folks take over,” she wrote on page 241.
There are a few points of believability that I struggled with when she recounts her childhood. She’s
raised in a nuclear family, and while never experiencing injustices herself or her immediate unit,
she speaks of wage inequality that an uncle experienced and the cars their family drove and
television programmes and even foods that were in the neighbourhood quite fondly though they
were lacking. There were moments I felt like I was in a episode of the Wonder Years, and I think
she purposely tried to show us that a strong family unit can alter and even improve a life in
subsistent conditions but the struggle of the community was vague and almost lost. I dare say she
sounded white. But that seems like an unintelligible remark given recent events.
There are places of over description that I’ve picked up on because I have been mindful of it in my
own writing. Like describing the cars her teachers drove (to show us their wages and standard of
living).
Overall, it’s a hard task to write evenly about things, events, memories that are so powerful and real.
She executed this amazingly. It speaks to all its readers and can far deep reaches with the ongoing
culture of racism, sexism and the political flaws in America. I’m reminded of Trevor Noah’s Born a
Crime.