Books, NonFiction

Becoming by Michelle Obama

Worth A Read Yes
Length 426
Quick Review Becoming is the story of how Michelle Obama grew from a little girl on the South Side Chicago to an icon, a role model. 

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Reading Becoming by Michelle Obama in Houston, Texas. | Skirt | Chambray Shirt | Polka Dot Top | Head Band | Watch | Shoes | Glasses | Earrings |

I read this during Black History Month, but life wouldn’t let me sit in one place long enough to sit and write. It is the first book review of Women’s History Month. Apropos since she has done so much for women and women of color in this country and around the world. 

Michelle Obama is funny, complex, intelligent, thoughtful, realistic, loyal, hopefully, and more. It’s so easy to water down a person to the image presented by the media; more often than not, she was left to be the woman standing behind the man in the white house. Up until Becoming, I knew very little about her life outside of the basics. I loved her as the symbol of hope and change she has been for myself and others. As a human, I didn’t really know who she was. As I turned each page, I saw a great deal of my own qualities in her. Type-A, reader, observer, sense of humor, and not wanting to veer from the path but needing to. Michelle Obama is relatable; someone just about anyone could sit down and have tea with. 

For those wanting a book about Barack Obama, he’s written his own. This is about Michelle. Barack shows up because he is a part of her story, but he is a supporting character. She does not let him over take her story, nor does she speak for him. She is telling her story, and she is a force. 

Michelle Obama grew up on the South Side Chicago, watching the neighborhood change from diverse to predominantly black. From a young age, seh was filled with a drive to reach and garner approval from those around her. She studied vigorously and “miserably at my desk, in my puke-green chair – puke green being the official color of the 1970s…” not only proving her sense of humor but her strength of will to withstand such visual torture. After reaching her entire childhood with the support of her parents, she attended Princeton before Harvard Law to become a lawyer in a law firm in downtown Chicago, where she would mentor and fall in love with her husband. 

There is a vulnerability and strength in her story. Struggle was a part of her life from an early age. Growing up black in a city not known for its kindness towards the black population. Her father battled MS. She was a minority in the Ivy League universities she attended and battled discrimination and low expectations her entire life. Michelle Obama spoke about the decision to leave the law after working so hard to get there. It’s a conversation people don’t often have, but I don’t know anyone who hasn’t fought that battle internally. There were so many moments of humanity, vulnerability, and relatability throughout whether it was miscarriage, in vitro, marriage, family, and career. It’s hard not to feel like you know this woman. Very few people can relate or even know the first thing about being on a presidential campaign trail. What most people can relate to is the stress careers can place on a relationship and family. The struggle to support a significant other when it means letting go of hopes and dreams to create new ones. Michelle Obama makes the unrelatable universally relatable.

This story isn’t just hers, though. Through herself, Obama is telling the story of people of color and more specifically women of color. The problem and cyclic nature of the angry black woman, “The easiest way to disregard a woman’s voice is to package her as a scold.” How hatred is incessant and often unfounded, but through acts of kindness and listening, “I’ve learned that it’s harder to hate up close.” The fact that creating minor change is difficult, but creating large scale change to affect a great number of people, “It was another thing entirely to try and get the place itself unstuck.” The Obamas were reaching to make the world a better place for everyone because they understood the struggle intimately. 

When you’re a public figure, it can be hard to be honest and vulnerable, but Michelle Obama does it with sincerity and an open heart. She tackles the struggles women and minorities face, the problems in society and policy, racism and hatred, and more with kindness and honesty. It was a sad day when she and her husband left the white house for many reasons. I love and admire her honesty about the awfullness of Trump and what his presence in the White House means, especially following her husband’s presidency. 

Throughout Becoming, Michelle Obama reveals herself to be a strong, resilient, intelligent, driven woman with kindness, empathy, and tenderness flowing through her every action. Though she may have not had the same big picture change in mind her husband did, the ripples she created in society have been felt as strongly if not more strongly because of her character, compassion, and willingness to be human, accessibly so.

Memorable Quotes
“I just wanted to achieve. Or maybe I didn’t want to be dismissed as incapable of achieving.”
School counselor telling her she wasn’t Princeton material, “Had I decided to believe her, her pronouncement would have toppled my confidence all over again, reviving the old thrum of not enough, not enough.”
About men: “Hearing them, I realized that they weren’t smarter than the rest of us. They were simply emboldened, floating on an ancient tide of superiority, buoyed by the fact that history had never told them anything different.”
On the pain of miscarrying and speaking with friends, “helping me see that what I’d been through was no more than a normal biological hiccup, a fertilized egg that, for what was probably a very good reason, had needed to bail out.”

bisous und обьятий,
RaeAnna

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Title: Becoming
Author: Michelle Obama
Publisher: Crown
Copyright: 2018
ISBN: 9781524763138

Books, NonFiction

To Obama by Jeanne Marie Laskas

Read YESSS!!!
Length 352
Quick Review A snapshot into the hearts of America. Oh my goodness. I cried so much. Filled with real letters from real Americans with real joys, worries, sorrows, and more. It’s hard not to be affected by it.  

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Reading To Obama by Jeanne Marie Laskas.

Up until reading To Obama by Jeanne Marie Laskas, I had never even thought of writing to the president. I always was under the impression of “what’s the point?” Up until President Obama, there probably wasn’t much of a point. There was no system.

When Obama walked into the White House, he made sure the mail was a priority. It was a way for him to connect to his people. The mail room was a mess. He decided he wanted to read ten letters a day, which became known as 10LAD. Over time, everyone in the White House was reading the mail, and if they weren’t, they wanted to be. A system was quickly put in place to read and reply to the mail. Occasionally, Obama would reply to a letter writer himself. The letters people sent in would be read and would even affect policy.

The people in the mail room were important, and their job was not easy. They were on the receiving end of every feeling America was having. Their job was not only to process the mail but to process American emotions. They read, they filed, they reported, they responded, they bonded. The workers became close because their experience was a unique one. I wish I could describe it to you, but you should just read To Obama.

There are samples of letters throughout the book. They are so moving. They express feelings and opinions on all sides of the political spectrum. What you believed didn’t matter; what did matter was that Obama believed each and every person mattered. That was the driving force behind the mail room: you matter. It was evident. To Obama was a mantra for so many people. Small children wrote in asking for help on their homework. Partners wrote in expressing their gratitude for the ability to finally marry. Conservatives wrote with disgust. Democrats wrote out of disappointment. Families from 9/11 wrote out of exhaustion. People wrote for so many reasons. Why? Because they felt like they mattered. 

Laskas focused on several letter writers from various backgrounds who wrote for different reasons. This cemented the mission of the mail room in reality, in how it touched people’s lives, in the ways it helped people. Laskas also focused on the people who ran the mail room because they were the ones who kept it going.

It was so well written. I rarely cry over books. I pretty much cried the entirety of To Obama. There is so much pain and happiness and success and failure within the pages. It takes snapshots of American flowing with so much raw emotions. It’s hard not to be overwhelmed taking it all in. I ended up having to read for an hour at a time, so I could take in what I just read. I’m an empath, as so many bookworms are, and it’s an intense read. Considering the outcome of the election, this was an interesting book to take in.

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Memorable Quotes
“Little hard data exists about constituent mail from previous administrations.”
“little by little, voice by voice, the mail could drive actual policy decisions.”

Title: To Obama, With love, joy, anger, and hope
Author: Jeanne Marie Laskas
Publisher: Random House
Copyright: 2018
ISBN: 9780525509387