Becoming

by Michelle Obama

Number of pages: 448

Publisher: Crown

BBB Library: Personal Success

ISBN: 978-1524763138



About the Author

Michelle Robinson Obama served as First Lady of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School, Mrs. Obama started her career as an attorney at the Chicago law firm Sidley & Austin, where she met her future husband, Barack Obama. She later worked in the Chicago mayor’s office, at the University of Chicago, and at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Mrs. Obama also founded the Chicago chapter of Public Allies, an organization that prepares young people for careers in public service.

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Editorial Review

Summary of Becoming by Michelle Obama. Through this summary, you’ll explore the different aspects of Michelle Obama’s life, starting her childhood. You’ll learn what challenges she faced and what choices she had to make. Most importantly, you’ll learn what shaped up the beliefs and the perception she brought along to the White House.  

Book Reviews

"The former first lady’s wit and warmth shine through in an extraordinarily candid account of her life inside and outside the White House.” – The Guardian

"There is a lot in Michelle Obama’s political views that I don’t like. But the more I got to know her as I read “Becoming,” the more I found myself liking and respecting her as a person.” – Washington times

"She emerges in these pages as a first lady who steadfastly believed in her husband’s abilities but had no illusions that the sludge of partisanship and racism would melt away under the sunny slogans of hope and change.” – The New York Times

"It's humbling and affirming to bear witness to the makings of the former first lady.” – Independent

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Wisdom to Share

I think it’s one of the most useless questions an adult can ask a child—what do you want to be when you grow up? As if growing up is finite. As if at some point you become something and that’s the end.

If you don’t get out there and define yourself, you’ll be quickly and inaccurately defined by others.

Failure is a feeling long before it becomes an actual result. It’s vulnerability that breeds with self-doubt and then is escalated, often deliberately, by fear.

Everyone on Earth, they'd tell us, was carrying around an unseen history, and that alone deserved some tolerance.

Friendships between women, as any woman will tell you, are built of a thousand small kindnesses... swapped back and forth and over again.

Friendships between women, as any woman will tell you, are built of a thousand small kindnesses... swapped back and forth and over again.

Now that I’m an adult, I realize that kids know at a very young age when they’re being devalued, when adults aren’t invested enough to help them learn. Their anger over it can manifest itself as unruliness. It’s hardly their fault. They aren’t “bad kids.” They’re just trying to survive bad circumstances At fifty-four, I am still in progress, and I hope that I always will be.

Bullies were scared people hiding inside scary people.

This may be the fundamental problem with caring a lot about what others think: It can put you on the established path—the my-isn’t-that-impressive path—and keep you there for a long time.

Dominance, even the threat of it, is a form of dehumanization. It’s the ugliest kind of power.