The recap
Before she was a lawyer, a hospital executive or the first African American First Lady of the United States, Michelle Robinson was a girl from the South Side of Chicago, sharing a small upstairs apartment with her parents and brother and practicing piano under the watchful ear of her great-aunt downstairs. Her memoir unfolds in three movements: growing up in a close, hardworking family; finding her footing at Princeton, Harvard Law School and a corporate career that left her restless; and then stepping, with genuine reluctance, into the glare of her husband's political rise and eight years in the White House. Obama writes openly about doubt, ambition, grief, fertility struggles and the scrutiny she faced as a Black woman in public life, along with the everyday work of raising two daughters inside a historic spotlight. Warm, funny and reflective, it is less a political memoir than a story about identity, belonging and the idea that a person never stops growing.
Why read it
For readers curious about life behind the White House doors, and for anyone who wants an honest, encouraging story about finding your own voice.
Fun facts
- 01
Becoming sold more than 725,000 copies in the U.S. and Canada on its first day, counting pre-orders across print, audio and e-book editions.
- 02
It sold 2 million copies in North America within two weeks and became the best-selling book of 2018.
- 03
By March 2019, Bertelsmann, which controls Penguin Random House, said sales had passed 10 million copies, and executives suggested it could become the most successful memoir in history.
- 04
Obama's own narration of the audiobook won the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.
- 05
Netflix's 2020 documentary Becoming, directed by Nadia Hallgren, follows her 34-city book tour, which was staged at the scale of a rock tour in arena-sized venues.
