Becoming by Michelle Obama

Are you a full-time working mom with a spouse who was often away from home? If you are juggle with trying to balance the needs of the family and with the demands of your job, this is the right book for you to read.

When I first grabbed this book from the library, I was a bit sceptical if I can finish reading it, but after reading the first chapter, I started to engrossed the with the story.
Michelle was brought up at the south side of Chicago in an upper floor house where her parents rented from her great-aunt. She had a very supportive family and this laid an important foundation of her family value and her communication styles even when she became the First Lady of USA.
 She attended Princeton University and followed by Harvard Law School.  While at Princeton, Michelle Robinson became involved with the Third World Center (now known as the Carl A. Fields Center), an academic and cultural group that supported minority students.
After graduation, she began her position as an associate at the prestigious law firm, Sidley & Austin , as a junior associate. At the firm, she met Barack who worked as a summer associate for Michelle. Soon they found they were attracted with each other and managed their long distance romance till Barack gratulated fro Harvard.  For a while, Barack and Michelle lived in the second-floor apartment on Euclid Avenue where she had been raised.
Barack and Michelle had very different family value due to that they grew up in completely different background. Obama came from a divorce family and was  raised by his white grandparent in laid-back Hawaii. He did not fully believe in marriage so long as the two people love each other. Unlike Michelle who believed in conventional family value and lovely parents and sibling.  It has been a challenge for them but eventually they overcome this and started their own family.
Seeking a more public-service-oriented career path, in 1991 Michelle became an assistant to Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. Later, she took an executive director for the Chicago chapter of Public Allies. And then, she transitioned to working at the University of Chicago Medical Center.
Michelle had a great career future ahead of her and being a working mother, it was not easy to juggle between her work and supporting Barack with his presidency champion. She was the last person Barack admitted about his ambition to run the presidency champion. Eventually, Michelle’s brother,  Craig Robinson’s, who had tried to get her buy in to support Baraka on running the presidency.

The bibliography then described in details about the up and downs in running the presidency champion. At some stage, their daughter, Sasha, was getting overweighted as they frequent had McDonald's driven through  food for dinner. She then had to hire chef Sam Kass to refocus on  nutrition balance of their family dishes. Eventually she also quite her job to focus on the champaign.
During the champaign, Michelle had been portrait as a ‘Gorilla’ for her angry and strong image to the public. It was hard for her and she did think about quitting,  but eventually after taking good advices from her colleagues/friends, she acknowledged that she needed to take consultant's advise on rebranding herself from dress to her voice tone in order to support her husband's ambition.

Being the First Lady came with unusual privileges and some unusual challenges. She decided to devote building a vegetable garden in White House for promoting nutrition and healthy living.  She had the chance to visit Neilson Mandela and Queen Elizabeth. I loved the joke that the Queen made about Michelle was surprising taller than she imaged, their were both wearing uncomfortable shoes for the sake of formality, and Michelle's broke in protocol on hugging the Queen. The Queen had showed Michelle that humanity is more important than protocol or formality.
After being in the White House for almost 8 years, Michelle was expecting to handover her role back to the Clintons'. 
The First Ladies had traditionally shown the White House to their successors. Barbara Pierce Bush handed over to Hillary Rodham Clinton then back to  Bush’s family by Laura Welch Bush before Michelle Obama.
Michelle did not hind her surprised that  Trump won the presidency it was to Melania Trump who she had handover to.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this book and looking forward to Michelle next new book.