Becoming by Michelle Obama

Genre: Memoir

"Becoming" is that book which I picked up on a whim. I didn't even know why I wanted to read it. Once I read a third of it and left it unread for about a month. Well! I picked it up again this June with a firm decision to complete it. And wow! I did it, now wondering why is that I left it like that then? It is a pretty awesome book!



The book on one side feels like Michelle Obama's strive to strike the perfect balance in her life. And how successfully she achieved it. She was very clear in portraying her life. Michelle Obama expressed the timelines of her life so reasonably in the book. Clearly, her connection of the incidents from her earlier life to those later in life as lessons learnt shows how we learn from our own experiences. This is a kind of realization to me that how important are the experiences in one's life.

I think this book is a perfect one to be read by an adult woman managing her job on one side and a family on the other side. Her experiences can be a kind of motivation. I was in aww! Knowing how gloriously she managed things as a mother, a wife and also as the first lady of the USA. She is indeed a great human in spirits and a true inspiration for women.

Let me share a few lines I liked the most from the book:

"You don't have to like your teacher, but that woman's got the kind of math in her head that you need in yours. Focus on that and ignore the rest."
The above words were a piece of advice given to young Michelle Robinson (Michelle Obama) by her mother one day when Michelle came home spewing complaints about her teacher.

"Failure is a feeling long before it's an actual result." 

"I had nothing or I had everything, It depends on which way you want to tell it." 
This last quote from the book is one of the best pieces of advice I found ever. It is as if this one sentence says it all. 

This book really teaches one about what is it to be a woman. It is so appreciative of her how she managed to lead her life like any ordinary woman. She is so grounded. This is the most important thing that everyone should learn from her life.

Location: India

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