“I spent much of my childhood listening to the sound of striving.”
I happen to think that Michelle Obama is an amazing woman
and I was super eager to read her autobiography. When a colleague from work
offered to lend me a copy you could see glee writ large across my face.
That excitement dissipated somewhat when I started reading.
For the first 200 or so pages, I was really struggling to connect with the
author as a fully realised human being and it made me think. There was
something too polished and almost pedestrian about the way she described
events. When I thought about that, I figured, if I had been a public figure
under constant scrutiny, that would be a manner that, for self-preservation at
least, I’d have to affect.
It wasn’t until we got to more contemporary events and
particularly when discussing her husband, her kids and the impact of some
rather harrowing occasions that I felt we’d grown closer to the woman behind
the pages. When that switch occurred, I really started to be drawn into the book
and was sad to see it come to an end.
When a beautiful, strong, eloquent woman actually gets airtime in a world of Trumps and Kardashians it is hard not to want to know more about her and hope that she continues to strive.
4 out of 5 life stories should be long.
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