by Michelle Obama.
Before reading “Becoming”, I only knew Michelle Obama as the First Lady of The United States (FLOTUS), that she is the first black woman in this position, that she looked elegant – smiling every time I saw her in a photo, and she made eloquent speeches in Presidential Campaigns and in Democratic National Conventions. After reading “Becoming”, I felt as if a neighbor and friend had just shared the details of her remarkable life story with me, in down-to-earth prose, with occasional wit and humor. Her narratives include deeply moving passages about tragedies, interesting personal traits and amusing episodes, words of wisdom, as well as personal reflections. Even though her life is unique, some of her reflections may find resonance in many readers’ own experiences. Several examples are given below as inducements for reading the book. (Skip the examples if you have already read the book.) A. Moving passages about tragedies: 1. When Michelle was only in fifth grade, one of her classmates, a boy named Lester McCullom, who lived nearby, had died in a fire that also killed his brother and sister. 2. Her fun-loving friend and roommate from her Princeton days, Suzanne, was diagnosed with cancer and died at the age of 26. When Michelle got to her hospital bedside, it was too late, missing the chance to say good-bye. On her trip back from Maryland to Chicago, Michelle wondered: “How the world just carried on. How everyone was still here, except for my Suzanne.” 3. The good-bye scene at the deathbed of her father, who suffered from the debilitating disease of MS for decades, steadily impairing his mobility. Over the years, her father never complained, never gave up and did not miss a day of work, giving his all to the family. 4. Hadiya Pendleton, a 15 year old girl from South Side of Chicago, who came with the King College Prep marching band to perform in President Barack Obama’s inauguration parade in January 2013, was shot and killed in a public park in Chicago, not far from her school, eight days after the inauguration. This was around the time of the Sandy Hook School shooting, during which twenty first graders and six educators were killed by a gunman firing a semiautomatic rifle. President Obama went to the Memorial for Sandy Hook, while Michelle went to the funeral of Hadiya Pendleton. The pages describing these two events were painful to read but extremely moving. B. Interesting Personal Traits and Amusing Episodes: 1. Barack Obama stored his belongings in heaps and felt no compunction to fold his clothes. 2. Barack was always late, starting with the first time he reported for work as a summer associate at the Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin. This caused Michelle, already a lawyer in the firm and assigned as Barack’s mentor, to wonder about the audacity of this young man. Later, during political campaigns, Michelle learned that, when Barack telephoned to say he was “almost home”, it was not a geo-locator but rather a state of mind. He may still want to talk to a colleague for some 40 minutes or to go to a workout in the gym. 3. In Barack and Michelle Obama’s visit to Windsor Castle in April 2016, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip came to pick them up when their helicopter landed, with Prince Philip driving. The protocol folks had told Michelle that she was to sit in the front of the car, and her husband in the back with the Queen. On arrival, The Queen gestured Michelle to sit with her at the back, telling her that the rule the protocol folks made up was rubbish. C. Words of Wisdom: 1. “I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child – What do you want to be when you grow up?” (To find out why the author says so, read the preface of the book.) 2. “You may live in the world as it is, but you can still work to create the world as it should be.” - Barack Obama 3. “Kids care about fame, it turns out, for only a few minutes. After that, they just want to have fun." 4. For politicians: “The more popular you became, the more haters you acquired.” D. Reflections that resonate with this reader: 1. Her family (parents, brother and herself) lived on the second floor of a bungalow in the Southside of Chicago. It reminded me of the 300 or so square feet room my family of four lived from 1950-1955, in Hong Kong. The room had just enough space for a double bed, a bunk bed (for my brother and me), and a couple of small desks. There was a common kitchen, toilet and bath facility nearby, shared with several families. 2. Their uprooting from Chicago to the White House reminded me of our uprooting from the U.S. to Hong Kong in 1973 (with a baby) and again from Hong Kong back to the U.S. in 1985 (with three school-age children). 3. “You’ve got to be twice as good to get half as far”. This is intended as advice for African Americans. However, it resonates with me, an Asian American. 4. “Hard work didn’t always assure positive outcomes”. Probably many readers had experienced this. While the book covers almost all periods of the author’s life before she became First Lady, from her childhood to the various stages of schooling, through her professional careers as a lawyer, vice president at a hospital and the director of a nonprofit, there appeared to be a gap. Detailed accounts were given of her experiences in elementary school, high school, and Princeton. However, not a word about her life as a student at Harvard Law School. On p. 355, when she listed all the people who had helped build her confidence, there was no one associated with Harvard. Makes the reader wonder why. In conclusion, in reading “Becoming”, I experienced again the recent history of this country through the eyes of a former First Lady, learning about the power and limitation of the presidency, and the good and ugliness of politics. I learned the agonizing balance of her career plans and those of her husband, the intensity of Presidential Campaigns, the pros and cons of living in the White House, the challenge of raising two teenage girls when their father was the President of the United States, the projects she initiated for improving the health and education of children, the dismay she felt when Hilary Clinton was not elected President in 2016 but maintaining her optimism about our country nonetheless. After learning her story, I have the feeling that Michelle Obama is someone who, if a reader has the opportunity to meet her, she would also be interested in listening to his/her story. For this reader, it is the story of an immigrant who grew up in the countryside of Hong Kong, somehow managed to obtain a degree from an Ivy League University, led a career in higher education in Universities in the East and West Coasts, the Mid-West, as well as the Deep South of the United States of America - nothing glamorous, but in the spirit of the American Dream nonetheless.
(Source: Wikipedia)
Link of review in amazon.com.
2nd among 140241 ratings as of 4/4/23
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