(book review)

“If you don`t get out there and define yourself, you`ll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others.”
(M. Obama)

Today I want to present the book by Michelle Obama ‘Becoming’.  In it, she talks sincerely about her relationship with her husband, about an aborted pregnancy and about what she will never forgive President Donald Trump.

Michelle Obama’s memoirs are divided into three parts – “Becoming Me”, “Becoming Us” and “Becoming Big” – and cover her whole life, from a cramped apartment in Chicago to “a place with so many steps that it was impossible to count them.”

Obama talks about the ups and downs, how she was extolled as the most influential woman in the world, and how she was toppled from this pedestal, calling her an “angry black woman.”

This widely condemned turnaround now appeared more than a century ago, when a rather offensive stereotype of a sassy and ill-bred black woman ignoring social norms was widespread in American society.

Michelle Obama was extremely upset by this at least partly racist stereotype; she even explained it in the television program of Oprah Winfrey telling that she had nothing to do with it.

In her book, Obama also talks about the bitterness of the loss of people close to her – a friend and father.

The second part is a romantic story of her relationship with the 44th US President Barack Obama. Michelle Obama tells how they became a family and how she looked for work to her liking. The Washington Post notes that the first lady had never written so frankly about her husband.

In the third part of the book, Michelle Obama focused on the life of their couple as public figures. Here she brings her gaze to the legacy that they left behind and to their achievements as the first lady. My rating is 10/10. It is a gorgeous book of a great woman.

Obama tells open-heartedly what it was like to live under the scrutiny of everyone. During the campaign for her husband’s re-election in 2012, she felt persecuted due to bitter criticism of her, including, inter alia, her skin color.