Book - Becoming by Michelle Obama

For the last few weeks, I've been on several campaign trails, met many world leaders, changed the way my country does things and this after growing up on the Southside of Chicago, going to Princeton and then picking up a law degree from Harvard. Because (as a black person) you’ve got to be twice as good to get half as far.

I can see why Becoming quickly became a best seller (2m in a couple of months) and not just because it was written by a former First Lady because nearly all of them have published a memoir. It is because it takes you by the hand and walks you through every step of this extraordinary life.

As this is the book from the first black First Lady (or Afro American to use the preferred 21st-century tag) we are not spared the prejudices that black people face every day in America to this day - in fact, worse today as they are, of course, going backwards (much like the UK except they can change their mind at the next election - we don't have that luxury). 

[Black people have] a cynicism bred from a thousand little disappointments over time. The weariness was inside her grandfathers, she says, inside her second-grade teacher who had given up and the neighbour who had stopped mowing their lawn. It lived in every bit of trash tossed carelessly in the grass at our local park.

The broken windows syndrome, as messy neighbourhoods are often referred to is something I quote often. When people excuse the one piece of trash or just one rusty car on the drive or one broken window, it’s unsettling as this inevitably leads to more as people’s pride in their neighbourhood disappears. Why should they bother?

Gun violence is not skirted around but confronted full-on as is the stream of black people killed by the police. This is quite an acknowledgement from the family who have been governing the US for eight years.

Michelle first saw Barack speak at a community event he was invited to help inspire local people: ‘What‘s better for us? Do we settle for the world as it is or do we work for the world as it should be?

I didn’t have the displeasure of seeing the caricatures but Michelle evidently coped with these when she saw people change their opinion of her once they had met her. ‘It’s harder to hate up close. 

It was different for the President who was hated by people he met on a regular basis who put up obstructions to stop him from building the world as it should be (for everyone). It turns out the Republicans already liked the biased world they had built. For them, the power came before changing the world, even if it meant damaging the lives of those whose votes they counted on.

I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves.

She seems to have the right level of patriotism with a huge dose of pride in her background and upbringing. She’s a descendant of slaves and an eternal optimist for America. The Obama’s paid for their own furnishings at the White House even though a generous allowance is allocated. The First Family do pay for their own expenses ie food shopping and the needs of overnight guests.

So it’s interesting to see how the soon-to-be First Lady appreciated a private jet when campaigning as it meant much more efficient use of time! They swapped out a bust of Churchill for one of MLK in the oval room - exactly as I would have and offered butlers more casual attire on non-guest days rather than wearing tuxedo's every day.

There are observations in Becoming that can only be written by an American such as comparing the White House to Buckingham Palace rather than Downing St and returning from Europe rather than just London. The First Lady talks fondly about the Queen who she quotes as dismissing a seating plan with ‘did they give you some rule about this sit? Rubbish, sit wherever you want’ Still, she got used to Oprah sending encouraging texts and Stevie Wonder turning up to play and calling her by her first name.

Turns out being the First Lady doesn’t have a salary or job description but she decided to continue the community work of her career albeit on the world’s stage. There are outrageous realisations such as school lunches in the US are a $6b business - why are they a business? We know why they are, in the same way, bail bonds are a huge business which not many want to change because it means poor people are held in prison without a trial (and often without a crime) and therefore cannot vote in elections for people like Barack Obama.

She loves kids which lead to many of the projects she chose to lead on. The school lunches issue resulted in the First Lady’s Let’s Move initiative within a year, got Walmart to reduce sugar, fat, salt & reduce prices on produce. Mayors from 500 cities committed to tackling childhood obesity too. And in 2010, her team helped push a bill through Congress expanding children's access to high-quality food in public schools.

Being President doesn’t change who you are. It reveals who you are.

There are surprising inclusions such as the joy of being able to walk into a shop and pick an anniversary card for the first time in years without all the fuss of every single outside the White House. I did wonder if the internet hadn’t made it to the US in 2009 although I do get it. I miss not be able to buy a specific light bulb or type of glue by popping to the High Street rather than having to wait for it to arrive in the post and hoping I’m in to receive it.

The only bit in the book that made me want to put it down was when I was in tears as I read a description of her visiting a military hospital. (at the top of page 346).

She’s a detail person to Obama’s big picture persona. She’s a planner to Obama’s wanderlust (he arrived late for their first meeting where she was allocated his mentor). She wanted a career alongside marriage and children like her mum and dad he was happy to just be with her, having grown up with a less traditional and yet loving home. And she’s he’s definitely organised and tidier and somehow, they match up to be a formidable team. She’s a community person but not political and nothing about her experience has made her interested in politics.

I find the book dripping in optimism which is hard to reconcile when I put the book down and see where America has slipped backwards to. However, this lady helped it go forward a few giant steps, so utterly entitled to her optimism. After all, when all is lost, there is only hope.