…To love Michelle Obama. In Becoming, Mrs. Obama tells the story of her childhood and her life up to the point at which we now know her.
Many of the basic facts and anecdotes in the book have been well documented through the years and the ever-present fact of her husband lends a deceptive familiarity to the book. Mrs. Obama’s voice also shines through and whether it’s because she has told many of the stories or because she is such a distinctive person, I imagined I could hear much of the book in her physical voice. This quality lends to a storytelling vibe, one that leads the reader to believe Mrs. Obama is speaking to her alone.
One of the most compelling aspects of Becoming, and I suspect Mrs. Obama herself, is that extraordinary as she and her life has been, it didn’t have to be. Her life is extraordinary because she has taken that ordinariness and made it into more than the sum of its parts. It is the result of hard work and determination, of consciously building relationships and giving as much as she received. Mrs. Obama emphasizes the work she has done throughout her life, from studying in grammar school, to laser focus on college and law school and later each of the careers she embarked on. She stresses the importance of having a parent advocate for her at a critical young age and later, the support of family and friends. She acknowledges the work that goes into a marriage and parenthood, and also how difficult it was to recognize when she needed help with both.
Most of the cultural portrayals of women in America have given us a view of women that is incomplete at best. There is a point in Becoming when Mrs. Obama talks about watching tv as a child and how the women she saw were either June Cleaver or Mary Tyler Moore. As she became an adult and tried to blend those personas, she felt how difficult it was, even, especially, at a time when women were being told they could have it all. “Having it all” was code for “being it all” and effortlessly, at that. I think this is a result of those cultural portrayals having been produced by men, who are, if they think of women’s work at all, baffled by how it all gets done. The end result is there, dinner is on the table, but the process is complete mystery. So why not imagine it was all done while wearing high heels and pearls? Mrs. Obama gives us a more complete picture of a modern American woman, showing us that there is no such thing as effortless womanhood. Being a woman in America, and particularly a woman of color in America, takes work and sacrifice and love and community.
I had endless respect and admiration for Mrs. Obama before reading Becoming and ended the book with even more. She tells a story that could be about millions of women and families in America but could also only be about one. And in that one, she could have easily been overshadowed or chosen a more traditional role. Instead, she took all of her work, sacrifice, love and community and made it bigger to include all of us.