Review of Becoming by Michelle Obama
Read Bailey Drumm’s review of Becoming by Michelle Obama, published in Yellow Arrow Journal’s Vol. V, No. 3 (Re)Formation issue (fall 2020). Information about where to find Becoming and (Re)Formation is below.
By Bailey Drumm
“Are you enough? Yes.” This mantra rings throughout Becoming by Michelle Obama, as she navigates the reader through the benefits of being truly, honestly one’s intended self. In order to address this, she chose to split her book into three sections: “Becoming Me,” which discusses her childhood leading up to her dating Barack Obama; “Becoming Us,” which encapsulates the beginning of their relationship up to President Obama’s inauguration in 2009; and “Becoming More,” which summarizes the Obama family’s time spent in the White House. She’s been a daughter, a mother, a wife, an attorney, a first lady, and an author, but what Obama assures readers is that being their genuine selves is their most attractive form. That’s what others want, and what they should want for themselves. A person will shine once their core being is defined.
Obama opens the book with “Becoming Me,” mentioning that she used to love when people would ask her, as a child, what she wanted to be when she grew up, because she had the perfectly constructed answer to impress adults. Now, as an adult, she hates the question, because growing up isn’t finite. Who we are, and what we are, are many things. We become different people as the world around us changes, and we form and reform ourselves around it.
After being stuck inside for months, I, as I’m sure many others have, became all too acquainted with my ‘alone’ self, versus who I became in a crowd. Currently, we are shedding our work masks and learning not to apologize for the inconveniences we have chosen to love. An essential part of being yourself according to Obama. We all have families to take care of and passions to support. Obama even brings up a time when her husband missed a flight back to Washington, D.C., to vote on a crime bill because of a sick child. Though professionally it may have been frowned upon, his family was (and is) his core value. And it is these small decisions and sacrifices explored in “Becoming Us,” that serve as a nice reminder that as humans, sometimes it’s okay to disappoint others, as long as we are following what we truly believe in.
Finally, in “Becoming More,” Obama discusses the lack of a guidebook to being the first lady, just as there is no guidebook to navigating life. Pointing this out is the first step to acknowledging that you have to make your own path. During her time as first lady, distributing information on nutrition, the process of food production, and general public health was Obama’s priority. Unfortunately, the world around her took more notice to what she was wearing than what she cared to address. To combat this, Obama made a point to present herself well—she even got a ‘glam squad’—in hopes that the public would notice the initiatives she was promoting as much as her image.
From a young age, Obama was encouraged to learn and advocate for herself. In fact, this mandate became another platform of hers, along with advocating for female role models, while in the White House. Over time, she came to realize not all children had the advantage of being helped at home. This lack of guidance caused some children to be devalued at school. She states, “Hearing them, I realized that [those with at-home guidance] weren’t at all smarter than the rest of us. They were simply emboldened, floating on an ancient tide of superiority, buoyed by the fact that history had never told them anything different.” A desire to impress (to emulate) can lead a child to accomplish things they may not have had the drive to do alone. Not only do her initiatives teach children the skills they are seeking out, but also the confidence to succeed in areas and situations they may feel intimidated by, rather than doubtful of their own worth. Obama wanted to make sure children who may have hidden potentials have the chance to speak and be heard through advocacy and mentoring programs.
In Becoming, she expresses that, growing up, her family was a group of planners, which made her an avid planner as well. Throughout the book though, she does not shy away from recalling difficult scenarios she was unable to plan around. In her mid 20s, she lost both a good friend and her father close together. Around the same time, she was assigned to be Barack’s mentor at a Chicago law firm, Sidley Austin LLP; at first she was less than impressed by him, but over time began to fall in love, changing the course of her career and the life she had originally planned. Though she studied her hardest, at one point, she even failed the Illinois bar on her first try. And, in her mid 30s, she even had to go through the heartbreak of a miscarriage.
Though these events are hard to read about, especially at a time like we are currently experiencing, and as a planner myself, it does offer a sense of comfort. There is a vast amount of ideas currently evolving around us, in our country and culture, that have to be taken in stride. But we can plan only day by day and take the unexpected on the chin. We aren’t perfect, we are just ourselves. These stories she presents, and Becoming itself, explore the fact that we need to get rid of the failing stigma in order to truly succeed. We can try to plan, but sometimes the universe has its own plan. People function better when honest, when we express our downfalls, rather than when we put up a front and go through trauma alone.
In owning your true self, you need to allow your mind to wander at night, be it thinking about a lost relative or income inequalities. You must own your story. No one else can for you. Approach the world as it should be, rather than complain about the world as it is. That’s how change is created. We learn from each other, and in learning we transform. “Becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim,” Obama writes. “I see it instead as a forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.” In other words, never stop changing in order to continue being (becoming) true to your genuine self. Never stop reforming.
A PDF of (Re)Formation is available in the Yellow Arrow bookstore or you can find the issue as a paperback or ebook through most online distributors. Becoming was published by Crown Publishing (2018; 448 pages). For more information, visit Becomingmichelleobama.com.
Bailey Drumm is a fiction writer whose written work has been featured in Grub Street and Welter, and digital art displayed as the cover art for the 2017 edition of Welter. She is an MFA graduate from the Creative Writing and Publishing Arts program at the University of Baltimore. Her collection of short stories, The Art of Settling, was published in the spring of 2019 and can be found at bailey-drumm.square.site.
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