Michelle Obama's Book Becoming - a review: Part 1

I'm very late to the party in picking up Michelle Obama's autobiography, Becoming.
I've been busy with University studies, but the light is at the end of that particular tunnel on Friday when I complete the semester with the final exam, so I have been - maybe a little too early when I should be studying - indulging in some leisurely reading.

I don't know about you, but I love biographies. I like them more than novels. Real people's lives are so fascinating.

I've always liked Michelle as a person and thought she would be a pretty interesting person to sit down and have a cup of tea with, and her book has only piqued my interest. She seems so wise and very down to earth, intelligent and relatable.
But there is so much in her book that I want to talk about, so I've decided to review the book in two parts.

I've been so enjoying hearing about her childhood growing up on the south side of Chicago. Chicago will always hold a special place in my heart for the year I spent living there.

I like the way she thinks. I like her tenacity. I like her grass-roots upbringing and I like that in her book she is not afraid to talk about the things that matter. She's a straight-talker but careful in her wording and gracious. I was excited to learn that she was a Sociology Major at College! No wonder I liked her!
In her book she is not afraid to talk about the things that had social consequence on her and her family. Things like racism.

This has always been a topic close to my heart because I've never understood racism. I still remember the shock I felt upon learning of slavery in my school Social Studies Class when I was 13 years old. That feeling has sat deep with me all these years.  Taking Sociology this year has helped me understand the why's of racism and how it has impacted our world so dramatically.

One of the most interesting aspects about Michelle's book is seeing her world through her eyes and through the eyes of the child she remembered as herself who is African American. She doesn't really directly talk about racism or growing up with racism,  she just talks about her family and friends and what she did as child, but for someone like me, not having grown up in America and not having grown up as African American, several things stood out to me in her writing:

Segregation was part of her life. She talks about white communities and black communities and the white part of town and the black part of town.

At college her roommate was moved out of her room because the mother objected to her daughter sharing with an African American girl.

Through the story of her childhood, the lens she wrote through was always with an acute awareness of her difference to the 'ruling race' in America at the time and yet she seems to have written it without fully being conscious of it. That's what I found fascinating.

It brought to mind this quote from my sociology class this semester:

W.E.B Dubois - "Those who are oppressed by race develop a dual consciousness, ever aware of their status in the eyes of others but also have a collective identity as African American, for example".

She spells that out in her books - whether it was deliberate or not, that lens is there.

I like this journey with her through her youth as she grows, matures, develops. I'm not even up to the part where she meets Barack yet - the part I imagine everyone wanted to read from that point on.
I like the cut of her gib, as the old saying goes. I'm enjoying her company.

“Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?”  Michelle Obama, Becoming


She's a true sociologist. America is lucky to have had her as their First Lady, and lucky to still have her influence.