Michelle Obama

An intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WATCH THE EMMY-NOMINATED NETFLIX ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • NAACP IMAGE AWARD WINNER In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America—the first African American to serve in that role—she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare. In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it—in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations—and whose story inspires us to do the same.

Becoming

Kirsten Dowie

Ian Brakspear

sooooooo now i have the name of the man who got rid of our tasty choco and strawb milk while i was in elementary school… watch ur back Sam. Never forgave michelle for that

Lauren R

One evening Sam and I spent a couple of hours talking in my kitchen, … I might use my role as First Lady to try to address some of these issues. One idea bloomed into another. What if we grew vegetable at the White House and helped advocate food? What if we then used that as a cornerstone for something bigger, a whole children's health initiative that might help parents avoid some of tie pitfalls I'd experienced?

Bethany Jenkins

Even if we didn't know the context, we were instructed to remember that context existed. Everyone on earth, they'd tell us, was carrying around an unseen history, and that alone deserved some tolerance.

Marek Hnatiak

(…) and finally, Barack, who always promised me an interesting journey.

Now 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.

The air smelled like spring. I sat on the steps of our veranda, feeling the warmth of the day's sun still caught in the slate beneath my feet. A dog started barking somewhere in the distance, and my own dogs paused to listen, seeming momentarily confused.

Hearing them, I realized that they weren't at all 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.

Here’s a memory, which like most memories is imperfect and subjective-collected long ago like a beach pebble and slipped into the pocket of my mind. 

We walked to a nearby bar in the same manner we always seemed to walk, with me a step forward and him a step back. Barack was an ambler. He moved with a loose-jointed Hawaiian casualness, never given to hurry, even and especially when instructed to hurry. I, on the other hand, power walked even during my leisure hours and had a hard time decelerating. But I remember how that night I counseled myself to slow down, just a little - just enough so that I could hear what he was saying, because it was beginning to dawn on me that I cared about hearing everything he said.

Becoming quotes

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