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.

Michelle 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 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.”

Gifted in basketball, Obama’s older brother Craig, was often scouted by various schools. However, their parents preferred to work hard to send him to a more expensive Catholic school that had better academic reputation than the local public schools.

Obama’s touching portrayal of her working-class parents’ monumental efforts to support her and her brother was my favorite part in the whole book.

Albeit crippled with the agony of multiple sclerosis, her father never complained and showed up for work every day to check on the boilers at a water-filtration plant.

Her mother went back to work the moment their family needed more money to send Craig to a better school. It was a relief to learn how their struggles paid off when Craig was accepted at Princeton University as a varsity team player.

Obama herself performed well in a test that allowed her to enroll at Whitney M. Young High School, Chicago’s first magnet high school that later became a top public school in the city.

An “equal opportunity nirvana meant to draw high-performing students of all colors”, it was also an “apparatus of privilege and connection” which could elevate her and her schoolmates to a higher ground.

Following her brother’s footsteps, Obama was also accepted at Princeton. A sociology major in a predominantly white elite institution, she realized that, as a minority student, “it takes energy to be the only black person in a lecture hall” and “an extra level of confidence to speak […] and own your presence in the room”.

“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.”

Despite the initial adjustments, Obama triumphed in her studies and secured a place at the most prestigious law school in the United States — Harvard Law School.

With her law degree in hand, Obama “was busy climbing up the corporate ladder, which was sturdy and practical and aimed straight up” — she landed a cushy job as a corporate lawyer at Sidley and Austin, a top law firm in Chicago.

Belonging to the firm’s marketing and intellectual property department meant putting in long hours and battling a steady stream of documents. She also had to mentor an incoming summer associate — a hotshot law student from Harvard with a strange name.

Barack Obama was late on his first day at Sidley and Austin. An exceptional and gifted law student, Sidley and Austin had already begun courting the first-year law student by offering him a summer associate position that was usually meant for those who were in their second year.

Michelle, who was not impressed by his tardiness and achievements, decided to keep her relationship with Barack on a strictly business status. With only five full-time African-American attorneys at an office that employed more than 400 lawyers, however, their “pull toward each other was evident and easy to understand” and it was of no surprise to anyone that they started dating.

Although he was a brilliant law student, Barack was also poor. Obama recalls fondly how she was driven around in a “banana yellow Datsun” with a hole in the floor of the car when she visited her future husband on the Harvard campus.

No one thought this African American couple, who came from nothing, would eventually become the president and first lady of the US. Despite all imaginable odds, they won over the voters and succeeded in serving two terms in the White House.

The second half of Obama’s memoir has been well documented in the media as she and her husband came under the spotlight as the president and first lady.  Being first lady, she recognized, afforded her soft power she could apply to champion causes such as promoting girls’ education worldwide, the welfare of military families and tackling the troubling issue of obesity in schools.

She also had to live with the whole world noting what she wore and how she acted with heads of state and their spouses.

Being the intelligent woman she is, she knew preparation was the key to success and that was how she managed her public persona during the eight years she spent while her husband ran the country.

Obama’s approach to motherhood while she was first lady was especially refreshing. Fiercely protective of her two daughters — Malia and Sasha, Obama was determined to let the girls have a semblance of a normal life.

With her every movement planned and tracked by the Secret Service, she ensured she slipped in and out quietly to watch either her daughter’s ballet performance or swim practice. She also made sure her daughters had playdates and were always polite to everyone, including all of the household staff.

She was fully aware that as spouse of the US president and the mother of two young children, her family could not afford to slip up during their tenure in the White House.

Under the ever-watchful gaze of the nation, she understood that their minority status meant they had to work extra hard because every blunder would be scrutinized and magnified.

Obama ends her memoir as her husband’s second term in office draws to a close.

After reading the book, I was filled with deep admiration and respect for this “urban black girl [who] had vaulted through Ivy League schools and executive jobs and landed in the White House”.

Even though she was first lady, she comes across a good friend who is kind enough to share her intimate secrets and advice on how to succeed as a dutiful daughter, student, wife and working mother. I cannot thank her enough for sharing her life’s journey with me. (ste)

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