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Michelle Obama’s ‘Becoming’, a story of perseverance and strength
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Book tour: Former US first lady Michelle Obama smiles during a visit to Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School in London during her tour to promote her memoir, ‘Becoming’. (Agence France-Presse/Ben Stansall)
I
laughed. I cried. I was inspired. With crisp and powerful prose, Michelle Obama’s Becoming is a must-read memoir that is packed with hard truths and moving real-life examples.
Obama begins her story at the end of her husband’s second term, when she had settled back into their “real” home. It was the first time that she could open the windows to let the fresh spring air into her house. The White House, she observed, had beautiful windows that could never be opened for safety reasons.
In the tranquility of her home, Obama beckons us into her life’s journey, starting at Chicago’s southside.
As a child of African-American parents who never finished their community college degrees, Obama always felt that she had to prove herself to the world. “I’ll show you,” she said, with a determination that I found truly remarkable.
When she was a precocious 4-year-old girl, she demanded of her tyrannical grand-aunt Robbie that she be allowed to learn the piano. Robbie owned the house where Obama’s family rented a one-bedroom apartment. During her childhood, Obama and her brother slept in the living room, leaving the bedroom to their parents.
As Robbie lived downstairs, it was convenient for Obama to take her lessons there. It was on Robbie’s broken upright piano, with chipped keys, where Obama started falling in love with the piano. She found that she had a natural affinity for it, learning how to play the instrument under her teacher’s strict instructions.
From a very young age, Obama learned quickly that education was her ticket to upward mobility: “I’d realized early on that school was where I could start defining myself - that an education was a thing worth working for; that it would help spring [me] forward in the world.”
