Becoming is an autobiography by Michelle Obama, and it is absolutely amazing. I first chose to pick up this book because Michelle Obama is my celebrity idol — whenever someone asks me a question like “If you could meet any celebrity, who would you meet?”, my answer has been Michelle Obama since I was little. Her accomplishments are absolutely amazing and inspiring.

This book is comparatively long, but the vocabulary that Michelle Obama uses, as well as her sentence structures are easy to comprehend. Yet, every word has an important meaning. In this book, Michelle Obama outlines her personal life, from growing up in the South Side of Chicago, to how she handled the election and the press, to the way she made a point to be present at her daughters’ bedtime despite her many responsibilities as First Lady. 

The book is divided into three sections: Becoming Me, Becoming Us, and Becoming More. As the names suggest, the first section is about Michelle Obama’s childhood and background. She discusses her family values, education, and jobs before meeting Barack Obama. The second section includes Michelle Obama’s family life with Barack Obama, and her support throughout his political journey beginning with public service and ending the night of the 2008 election. She talks about her emotions, and the confusions of how everyone wanted her to act versus how she wanted to be perceived and what message she wanted to convey. The final section discusses her life in the White House as First Lady. This part was especially interesting, since she tells us about her famous initiatives like Let’s Move, but readers get a much deeper understanding into her motivation and her mindset. It’s honestly really fun how personal her book is.

It is interesting to see her viewpoint on the election and White House life — she expresses a clear dislike for politics and even says that “the political world was no place for good people”. The way I understand it, Michelle Obama’s motivation throughout the journey was her belief that Barack Obama would be an amazing president. She had been by his side for some time and had seen his passion for helping people, and she knew that he would continue and extend this passion to all Americans.

I would give this autobiography a 5/5. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. We all know about Michelle Obama’s achievements, but we are not aware of what was going through her head during elections and travels, or about her background and childhood. It was very interesting to read about her personal journey — the one that the news has not covered.

-Ayati M.