For me, Michelle Obama’s memoir was a good mix of known and unknown: enough familiarity to resonate with my experiences, with enough differences to fascinate and educate me. I loved learning about her childhood, growing up aware of class differences but buttressed by a supportive family; I was in awe of her journey from Chicago’s South Side to the Ivy League and Biglaw; I sympathized with her struggles with work-life balance and search for career fulfillment, while keeping in mind what she owed to her roots and her family. I also loved seeing Barack through her eyes; her tolerance and affection was palpable through her voice in the audiobook. I could have used a little more of her perspective on the global events that happened during the Obama administration though; instead, she pointedly kept out of politics for the most part and concentrated the bulk of her narrative on her initiatives for child nutrition and her concerns about raising her daughters with as much normalcy as possible. The major awkwardness about this book is that although Michelle Obama is an impressive woman by any measure, at the end of the day she becomes defined by traditionally feminine roles: wife, and mother. She works with the title throughout the memoir, “becoming” first one thing and then another; as her husband retires from politics and her daughters grow into their own, she may find herself more free to transcend traditional roles.