It took me a very long time to finish this book. A year and a half to be exact. It wasn’t that I wasn’t enjoying the book because I find that the story very inspiring but it was just very slow. Now that I have finished the book, I’ve revisited some (but not all) of my favorite quotes from the book. Michelle Obama is and will forever be my first lady.
It was like stepping onstage at your first piano recital and realizing that you’d never played anything but an instrument with broken keys. Your world shifts, but you’re asked to adjust and overcome, to play your music the same as everyone else.
p.75
Michelle is referencing the disadvantages that she faced during her time at Princeton. The isolation she felt being one of the few Black students on campus helped her realized the privileges of her peers. As a first-generation student, I can identify with this completely. It seemed like I was having daily revelations of how my previous schooling did not prepare me for collegiate success. Yet, I was persistent in a system that was not designed for my success. We know that the education system does not offer a level playing field, from the allocation of resources to the quality of teachers. Michelle continues, “it takes energy” and yes it does. As I am looking at the finish line of my doctoral degree, I realized that I have exuded a lot of energy to simply maintain.
I was a female, black, and strong, which to certain people, maintaining a certain mind-set, translated only to “angry”. It was another damaging cliché, one that’s been forever used to sweep minority women to the perimeter of every room, an unconscious signal not to listen to what we’ve got to say.
p. 265
Black women everywhere have to constantly and consciously fight against the “Angry Black Woman” stereotype to the point that it is exhausting. I agree that this stereotype is another tool to demean and silence black women. The constant media badgering that Michelle Obama had to endure during her tenure as First Lady is proof that America, generally speaking, wants nothing to do with Black women. Michelle acknowledging this fact validates the experiences of Black women everywhere, including myself.
There had been so many times in my life when I’d found myself the only woman of color — or even the only woman period — sitting at a conference table or attending a board meeting or mingling at one VIP gathering or another. If I was the first at some of these things, I wanted to make sure that in the end I wasn’t the only — that others were coming up behind me.
p. 355
This quote promotes the importance of sisterhood. It’s not a brag to proclaim that you are the only in any space if you are not doing anything to help bring others into that same space. While it is a hard task to take on, it has greater implications in the long run. It is empowering. It is inspiring. It is the image that can be replayed as motivation to continue going when things are getting tough.
Becoming requires equal parts patience and rigor. Becoming is never giving up on the idea that there’s more growing to be done.
p. 419
The journey to self-awareness and actualization is ongoing. Through her memoir, Michelle discusses the intricacies that shaped who she became but that also did not hold her back from what she still has left to become. For an extended period of her life, she put her wants and needs on the back burner to be a support for her husband. Now that her First Ladyship is behind her, it seems that Michelle is becoming something even greater.
This memoir is extremely inspirational because I can say that I share very similar experiences to the First Lady. This book makes her seem very relatable as if she could be my aunt or big sister.
As I watched her Netflix special, I kept constantly getting the urge to cry. I can’t even really explain why. I can assume it’s because I am seeing this dynamic Black woman connect and relate to women of all different backgrounds. Seeing the admiration that other women have for Michelle is heartwarming.
When asked how to navigate invisibility as a black woman, Michelle so eloquently shared that she never felt invisible because her parents always made her feel visible. She continues,
“We can’t afford to wait for the world to be equal to start feeling seen… so you’ve got to find the tools within yourself to feel visible, and to be heard, and to use your voice.
The importance of self-love is so key! It is much easier said than done and we all are a work in progress, but understanding its importance is key.
The Netflix special was a great summation of the book. It provided the image to the words. The story of the documentary even follows the flow of the book. In conjunction, the two worked well together. Also, Mrs. O appreciating Drake’s “Nonstop” was so great to watch.
