Skip to main content

A Critical Review of 'Becoming' by Michelle Obama - Ananya Jain

 Becoming- Michelle Obama

In this book, the former first lady opens up about her early life, her journey to the White House, and the eight history-making years that followed. 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.


Michelle Obama invites readers into her world in her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her - from her childhood on Chicago's South Side to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world's most famous address. She discusses her victories and disappointments, both public and private, with unerring honesty and vivid humor, presenting her complete life as she has lived it - in her own words and on her own terms. Becoming is the very personal assessment of a woman of spirit and substance who has consistently defied expectations - and whose tale inspires us to do the same. It is warm, intelligent, and enlightening.


She persevered, graduating from Chicago's first magnet high school, Princeton, and later, adjusting to life in the White House was a formidable challenge for the self-described "control freak"—not to mention the difficulty of shielding their daughters from the ugly side of politics and preserving their daughters' privacy as much as possible. Throughout it all, Obama remained committed to serving with grace and helping others via programs such as the White House garden and her drive to combat childhood obesity. And, while claiming to be "not a political person," she expresses candid comments on the 2016 election.


An engaging narrative as well as a vibrant discourse on what great grace looks like in the face of enormous strain - Michelle Obama's 'Becoming'.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Review of "The Tale of the Rose" by Emma Donaghue

 A Review of "The Tale of the Rose" by Emma Donaghue - Mayura Bhandari “The Tale of The Rose” is a retelling of the popular children’s fairy tale, “The Beauty and The Beast”. It is one of the short stories in the collection by Emma Donoghue, called Kissing The Witch . The story is narrated from the point of a young woman who describes herself as having an appetite for magic. She doesn’t desire suitors, finery or riches. When her father’s ships get lost at sea, her cushy life disappears. But without despair, she gets to work. She washes her father’s clothes, finding peace and satisfaction in it. When fortune smiles upon their family, her siblings ask for riches and finery, but she desires a red rose bud. Her father returns and hands her the rose, explaining that the price of that flower was that he had sold her to a Beast. Obediently, she heads over to the castle, nervous and excited for a new chapter in her life. She recalls the lore the villagers told her. About a young

Psychological Analysis Of Waiting For Godot

Psychological criticism adopts the methods of "Reading" employed by Freud and later theorists to interpret texts. It argues that literary texts, like dreams, express the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the author, that a literary work is a manifestation of the author's own neuroses. Here, we are going to apply the same form of criticism on Samuel Beckett’s play, ‘Waiting for Godot.’  Unanswered questions behind the characters behaviour are answered here. We would be looking further to the psychoanalytical approach, Sigmund Freud being the important proponent here. A major focus on the language and how dreams reflect our mental personality are given in his second essay, “Interpretation of Dreams.” The plot clearly states that Estragon has nightmares and Vladimir never addresses them and remains unhelpful towards it, being the one who is aware about their sufferings. The nightmares contain flashbacks and images of a gruesome and horrific event that has hap

Marxism in Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett, the most eminent Irish playwright wrote ‘’Waiting for Godot’’ in French in 1949 and then translated it into English in 1954. This play has been performed as a drama of the absurd with astonishing success in Europe, America and the rest of the world in the post second world war era. For this reason, Martin Esslin calls it, “One of the successes of the post-war theatre” (Esslin, Martin, 1980) In this play, the two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, wait expectantly to see a man simply known as Godot, a character who does not make an appearance in the play, despite being the titular character. The play begins with waiting for Godot and ends with waiting for Godot. Marxism refers to the political and economic theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, later developed by their followers to form the basis of communism. Marxism introduced ideas such as Dialectical Materialism, Alienation, and Economic Determination. Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ has a minimalist setting