Cromey Online

The writings of author, therapist, and priest Robert Warren Cromey.

Friday, January 25, 2019

BECOMING MICHELLE

Friday, January 25, 2019

Becoming
Michelle Obama
Crown 2018

A fine book. Let’s all read it. I did. It’s a tale of a middle-class family whose daughter became the wife of the President of the Unites States. Her dad worked for the Chicago Water Company and her mother a housewife who later worked as a secretary. Hard working Michelle went to Princeton and Harvard Law. Her teen years are told with winsome delight, with the pains sorrows and joys of an African-American or any American kid. 

The trajectory from urban Chicago to the White House is well known and aptly described in the book.  From high salaried lawyer to legal services for the non-profits is illustrated by taking a $60,000 pay cut is a case in point. Her courtship with Barak Obama is sweet and her efforts to be a careful devoted mother of the two daughters is moving. The White House years are kept humorous battling the ever present and necessary secret service protection and creating a vegetable garden on the lawn. There is so much more worthwhile entertaining, political and historical information in the book.

I have a quibble. The religious and theological life of the Obamas is superficial if not absent from the book. Michelle’s family apparently were not church goers. There is scant mention of the Jeremiah Wright scuffle in the Chicago Church. The Obamas attended, but Barak and family left when Dr. Wright became too strident in his political attacks. But there is nothing about what they believed about God, Jesus and prayer. Mrs. Obama mentions that they prayed in national crises, but nothing about what prayer meant to them.

That aside. Becomingis a powerful and wonderful book.