Becoming - Michelle Obama - ★★★★.¾

AUTHOR: Michelle Obama

GENRE: Autobiography.

PUBLICATION DATE: November 13, 2018

RATING: 4.75 stars.

When I watched the movie "The Mask" in 1994, I was mesmerised by Jim Carrey's performance. I felt almost personal pride to see what he could achieve in his facial expressions and comedy. A similar moment of false vanity came later in the same year when I heard the magnificent "Ek ladki ko dekha to aisa laga" from the movie 1942:A Love Story. The way Javed Akhtar had woven the words together mesmerised me and awoke in me a passion for poetic expression. I probably would have felt equally puffed up about Mohammed Ali winning his boxing bouts against tougher opponents but he was a bit before my time. What is common to this motley mix of names, you ask? Well, all these achievers share the same birth date as me! So you see, I have been weirdly crazy for people born on January 17th ever since I can remember!

This craze took a different direction in end-2008 when I discovered Michelle Obama. No doubt the common birthday factor was a clincher, but even more than that, I was taken over by her grace, intelligence and charm. Always so elegant, always smiling, she managed to kick out my interest in anyone else sharing our birth date. The way she handled her own children and others' children too, the way she ensured her own individuality in spite of being such a high profile wife, every single fact interested and awed me. I had transformed into a big Michelle Obama fan!

So when I discovered that she had released her autobiography, there was no doubt in my mind that I would go for it. The only question was 'when'. The answer was equally simple: January 17th, "our" birthday! 😁

The above background is to help you understand why I might sound gushing in my review of her book. But honestly, in the last fortnight that I've spent with Michelle and Becoming, she has not let me down even a tiny bit! Whatever high expectations I had from her autobiography, she has met those and even surpassed them easily!

I already knew about her Ivy League educational background, and I was aware of her initiatives related to Child Obesity and support to military families. But this book reveals a Michelle Obama as I had never imagined: a girl who played with Barbies when she was small and loved watching romcoms when older, who faced catcalls from roadside romeos, who constantly feared "Am I good enough?", who is obsessive-compulsive about neatness and prior planning, who hates smoking and smokers, .... These tiny nuggets of her life helped in bringing her so close to me as a reader. I could identify with her completely as I had all these characteristics myself!!

But, as she says in the epilogue, "I’m an ordinary person who found herself on an extraordinary journey." From a humble start in a lower middle class family to being the FLOTUS, she details her truly uncommon journey in a down-to-earth manner throughout.

Unlike most autobiographies which scream "Listen to me! I'm so great! Learn from me!", Becoming just narrates a human experience. You see struggles that mirror your own: college decisions, job decisions, spouse decisions, marriage decisions, parenting decisions,... You also get an ringside view of struggles you can't even begin to imagine: living in the public eye, protecting your children's privacy against selfie-crazy strangers, not being able to go anywhere without a battalion of security accompanying you, being judged for everything right from your looks to your clothes to your words, even your facial expressions! The craziness of life before the public eye is laid bare before you.

Becoming is a training manual in so many ways. It teaches you the importance of education in reaching your goals. It instructs you on how to adjust and adapt in a marriage. It shows you how to parent better. It enlightens you on using whatever power you have for the betterment of society in whatever way you can. There is no pomposity in the book. When she says "I felt sometimes like a swan on a lake, knowing that my job was in part to glide and appear serene, while underwater I never stopped pedaling my legs", you can truly identify with her struggle in the spotlight as the visible woman of colour in a white-dominated country.

At the same time, she doesn't stick to the safe path and whitewash (pun unintended) anything. Michelle Obama doesn't mince words. Whoever deserves a berating in her opinion gets it clearly and unabashedly. Her calling Trump a bully is just one of my most favourite bits in the book.

Michelle's statement that "Becoming is never giving up on the idea that there’s more growing to be done" resonated with me the most. I have always believed that one must never stop learning in life, but now that my idol has put it across with such clarity, this is going to be the motto of my life: I will never stop growing in mind.

This is a book worth reading, without any doubt!