BookLife Reviews: Becoming and The Light We Carry, by Michelle Obama
memoir, First Lady, Michelle Obama, Obama Administration, Chicago, South Side Chicago, White House, Covid, community, emotional intelligence, growth, education of girls and women, knitting
A double review is unusual but since Michelle Obama’s two books are both autobiographical memoirs, a double whammy makes sense.
Becoming was a resplendent read. I just gobbled up her backstory. During her husband’s Presidential campaign and her time in the White House, she kept a low-profile with respect her personal history and her family. An accomplished professional woman in her own right, Obama initially was a reluctant partner in Barack’s quest for the Presidency, and she valued not only her own privacy but the need for her children to grow in some state of normalcy. So, the publication of this book delivered a treasure trove of facts about her life as a child, a sister, a daughter, a student and a lawyer in the significant and formative part of her life before Barack ever walked into it. The influences, gifts, struggles and challenges she faced growing up on the South Side of Chicago forged her into the self-contained and powerful force that is Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama. She grew up in relative poverty, her father a boiler furnace technician and her mother a homemaker. She attended local public schools and endured long bus rides to attend a magnet high school for talented and gifted youth. Michelle was among the first woman of color to attend Princeton University. Her Princeton experience was intense, and exposed her to the challenge of being a woman of color in a way that the comfort of her largely African American neighborhood and prior school experiences had not.
The book devotes considerable time to the non-linear path of Michelle’s career before her historical turn as First Lady. She began and succeeded as a top lawyer in a competitive Chicago corporate law firm. Later she accepted legal positions in both the public sector, the health sector and academia, as she, like many women began the struggle of the juggle to navigate the multiple roles of professional, spouse and daughter, and later, mother of two. Obama’s candor about the difficulty of this balancing act, the impact on her health and well-being and happiness, is a welcome validation for the millions of women everywhere who undertake this challenge daily. The chapters about the Presidential campaign, the demands on her and the stereotypes and expectations she encountered there were eye-opening. The final quarter to one-third of the book is the '“inside baseball” part, the behind the scenes window into life in the White House. She generously shares delicious tidbits about the residence, their family life, seeking normalcy and privacy that are delicious. She also shares the hardships and heartbreaks that she endured when racism reared it’s ugly head during the Obama’s two terms.
The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times is a reflection on Michelle Obama’s life after her years as First Lady, and during the Covid pandemic. With Becoming in the rear window, and a resoundingly successful book tour completed, the second memoir is a more introspective, reflective, and at times meandering book. Obama describes this book as an assembled tool box of strategies to overcome life’s challenges. She talks about knitting as a meditative exercise, she explores the difficulties inherent in marriage, parenting and holding on to identity, wellness and integrity in the face of severe challenges. She candidly reflects on her experience and challenges navigating her universe as a strong, intelligent and powerful black woman in her own right. She muses over finding next chapters and passions in the many chapters life presents, of finding her own sense of style, and of raising and releasing children. The Light We Carry is less of a through-thread narrative than Becoming was, and therefore is somewhat less compelling, but it is a book you can read in segments, absorbing and digesting chapters one at a time, rapidly in succession or in a serious of paced course over a period of days or weeks. Together, Becoming and The Light We Carry paint a full and welcome picture of one of the foremost females of our lifetime. Alas, she has vowed she will never herself run for office.