I was a junior in college when Barack Obama’s star began rising on the national stage circa Spring 2007. I happened to be spending a semester in Washington D.C. through a program at my school.
Ostensibly, I was there to intern at the H.R.C., but I spent more of my time agonizing over my on-again and off-again relationship with my highschool boyfriend, fighting with my roommates and drinking way too many Long Island Iced Teas in Adam’s Morgan than taking the opportunity I was given to immerse myself in politics and truly understand what the hell was going on. I did get a chance to attend a meeting of the D.N.C., meet Al Gore and read ‘Dreams from my Father’. Like most people my age, I was smitten with Obama and really believed in the hope he offered. I also thought he was handsome. I remember sitting in my student apartment and talking to someone on the phone about how I couldn’t believe that I lived in the same city as Barack (we were obviously on a first name basis) and remarking over the fact that he had a thing for Michelle’s so maybe I had a chance someday if their marriage didn’t work out.
HAH!
Of course, The Obamas became a major thing and I fell in love with them both. I no longer entertain ideas of stealing Barack from his true Michelle. I just love the first lady so much. So, when her book Becoming came out, I enthusiastically added it to my cart and looked forward to the opportunity to read it. I took the first couple of days of my holiday break to read it and I really enjoyed myself. It was fun to see glimpses behind the scenes of what we saw publicly and to try to understand what it was like to be First Lady. I choked back tears several times, especially when she spoke about the closeness and intimacy in their marriage. It was really beautiful.
Even though the book is long, I felt like it was still a surface-level account of the last 54 years of her life. There is no way we could really understand the experience of her lifetime in one book. In looking back, I wish that she would’ve been a bit more focused on one time period instead of cramming the whole experience into one. I also felt like she clearly hasn’t yet really processed what she went through while he was in office, so she might’ve benefitted from waiting a bit longer to share her story in this format. It was great, but I thought it could’ve been even better.
It’s easy to be a critic, but I’ve learned through experience that it’s much harder to write a book and to dive into your life and draw some sort of conclusion from it than you’d think. This book is a wonderful read and it left me knowing and loving the First Lady even more. Here’s a link if you want to check it out for yourself.