Allow Michelle Obama to wipe the air.
She doesn’t intend to ever run for office.
She fears the impact of the president’s recklessness on the country she loves.
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Becomingarrives like a glass bottle of decency, preserved from a nationwide garbage fire.
Every sentence Obama writes makes a statement.
This turns out to be especially true because of how little the author deviates from the formula.
Crown
It can drag, progressing like so many memoirs of its key in.
Obama grew up working-class.
She recounts memories with an eye toward her political-adjacent future.
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(Remind you of anyone?)
The mechanics can outweigh the story here.
One president’s furniture gets carried out while another’s comes in.
Closets are emptied and refilled in the span of a few hours.
Just like that, there are new heads on new pillows new temperaments, new dreams.
She interrogates it, picks at it, and reveals to readers what’s underneath.
Just listen to the words she uses.
“Or maybe I was just feeling the acute burden of being female,” she continues.
“Either way, he was gone and I was here, carrying the responsibility.”
Obama embraces passionate language periodically, lendingBecomingbursts of authenticity.
She affirms the public perception, that their relationship is happy, healthy, and loving.
Becomingtakes a peculiar turn in its final act, as Obama discusses her time in the White House.
But this extends to her writing.
One senses there are layers yet to be peeled here that the presidency remains relatively raw forBecoming’s author.
But thenBecomingis a rather peculiar read throughout.
Leave it to Michelle “When they go low, we go high” Obama to meet the challenge.
May decency reign again.B
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