Michelle Obama watched every word for eight years. In her brief, she has finished with that.

As the first lady, every word uttered by Michelle Obama and each of her actions has been thoroughly reviewed for any risk of harm to her husband's presidency. Now freed from the constraints of the White House, she is ready to say it as she sees it. His new memoir is crackling with dull and often burning observations on politics, race and sex in America. Its title, "Becoming," is a testament to its journey from its humble beginnings in Chicago's South End to an incessant fire on the world stage.

Although his life has been busy, Obama is still figuring out who she wants to be. For the first time in two decades, she allows herself to explore her own ambitions independently of the rest of her family. She writes that her little girls, Malia and Sasha, are now "young women with projects and voices of their own". Her husband "takes a breather" after eight years as president. "And here I am," she writes, "in this new place, with a lot of things I want to say."

"Becoming" is a political spouse's memoir like no other, and I say that as an author. Obama is wasting no time in naming all the people who helped to elect his husband. It's his book, not his. She also quotes, from name and deed, some of those who offended her. This is not an act of revenge, but rather a clear sign that she does not want to pretend that none of this is of any importance. Good for her

Life in the public light has left Obama's disgust for politics stronger than ever. "I'm going to say it directly here: I have no intention of running for a job, ever," she wrote. "I have never been a supporter of politics and my experience of the last ten years has done little to change that."

During those 10 years, however, she learned a lot about herself, her marriage, and America. She admits insecurities and missteps. She recognizes her many firsts as a black woman, which fuels a sense of urgency in her writing. She wants to make sure that other black women have the same opportunities as they do.

But it was not easy. "Since I reluctantly entered public life, I have been portrayed as the most powerful woman in the world and as an" angry black woman, "she writes in the preface. These three words – angry black woman – make her want to ask her detractors "what part of this sentence is most important to them – is it" angry "or" black "or" woman "?

The lack of sincerity and indecency of the policy have sometimes left wounded and furious. "I smiled for photos with people who call my husband horrible names on national television, but still want a framed souvenir for their coat," she writes. "I've heard about the swampy parts of the internet that are questioning all of me, whether I'm a woman or a man. A sitting US congressman mocked my buttocks. . . . I especially tried to laugh at this stuff.

At the heart of this memoir, there is the story of an intelligent and talented woman who grew up without ever doubting her love and who will never forget her roots in the working class. She is above all the daughter of Fraser and Marian Robinson, who taught her, as well as her older brother, Craig, that education and self-discipline were the path to rewarding life. She devotes about the first third of her book to her childhood in her cramped 1960s apartment in Chicago.

Her parents' ambitions for their children make Michelle and Craig very early on recognize some of the other black kids in their lives, including parents. When she was about 10 years old, Michelle was playing with some cousins ​​when one of them shot him a "side look" and said, very warmly, "How come you talk like a white girl?

Obama was mortified. "But I knew where she was coming from. No one could deny it, "she wrote. "I made Speak differently to some of my parents, just like Craig. Our parents had taught us the importance of using proper diction, of saying "go" instead of "goin" and "not" instead of "no". . . The idea was that we had to transcend, we go further. "

In high school, a counselor discouraged him from applying to Princeton, where Craig was already a student. She ignored the advice and was accepted. Only 9% of his freshman class was black. It was a first for her. She writes with emotion about "the daily expansion of a deep minority" and the pressure she felt to prove to herself and others that she "belonged to Princeton as much as anyone" .

There are many tender moments in this memoir, much centered on her father, whose health has steadily declined from multiple sclerosis until she died at age 55 in 1991. She describes how much he has done to her. struggling against her growing disability and she takes care to show us the man separated from his illness. He worried about his car and "loved every excuse to drive," she writes. As a child, in the days leading up to the seatbelt, she stepped into the back seat and stood next to her father's side so that "we have exactly the same view".

She was with her father just hours before her death and struggled for months with her grief. At that time, Barack was in his life. "Many nights," she wrote, "when I was still crying about my father's loss, Barack was now there to snuggle around me and kiss my head. "

She admits that nothing could have prepared her for Barack Obama, who had initially struck her as "strangely free of doubt, even if, at first sight, it was hard to understand why." She began as a counselor in a cabinet of lawyers during his student stay. stage, and it quickly became "a wind that threatened to upset everything."

She is sincere about their differences: she is a perfectionist and a planner who leaves little to chance. He is an optimist who "sees his possibilities as infinite, who does not waste time or energy wondering if they will ever dry up". It was his nature to "get shot and stay shiny, like an old copper cauldron."

She loved her confidence, but at the beginning of their relationship, she worried about what her unremitting efforts could do for her dreams. "I was deeply and deliciously in love with a guy whose energetic intellect and ambition could eventually end up swallowing mine," she writes. "I needed to anchor myself quickly on two feet."

He was a good counterweight to his fear of uncertainty. Barack, she writes, taught her to "flip-flop" by offering "the only voice that tells me to go for it, clear the worries and go to everything I thought would make me happy." ".

As both have recognized, their marriage has faced challenges, starting with the first time they had difficulty starting a family. Her first pregnancy ended in miscarriage, which she describes as "lonely, painful and demoralizing almost at the cellular level". They consulted a doctor who specializes in fertility, who finally recommended in vitro fertilization. Barack's session in the Illinois legislature began at the same time that, for weeks, she injected herself with daily injections.

"It was perhaps at that moment that I felt a first surge of resentment between politics and Barack's unwavering commitment to work," she writes. "Or maybe I just felt the acute burden of being a woman. Anyway, he was gone and I was there, assuming responsibility. . . . He loved and invested, my husband, doing what he could do. He read all the literature on IVF and talked about it all night, but his only duty was to go to the doctor's office and provide him with sperm. "

Although Michelle knows that none of this is Barack's fault, she still bristles with the inherent inequality. "For any woman who lives by the mantra that equality is important, it can be a bit confusing," she wrote. "It's me who changed everything, putting my passions and career dreams on hold, to realize this piece of our dream. I found myself in a small moment of calculation. Did I want it? Yes, I wanted it so much. And with that, I hoisted the needle and squeezed it into my flesh. "

Barack Obama was publicly outspoken about their marital tensions when their daughters were young and he was a very busy state senator on the road. At that time, Michelle describes her life as a "full-time mother with a part-time wife." Her husband's "overloaded schedule was starting to hurt her" and her indifference to punctuality was "a direct aggravation. "Her ambition, she feared," would eventually meet all our needs. "

The couples consultation helped. Michelle found a way to be happy without Barack leaving politics and she was giving the example to her daughters. "I did not want them to believe that life started when the man of the house came to the house. We did not wait for dad. It was his job now to catch up with us.

Political wife still reluctant, she explained that if he did not win his seat in the US Senate in 2004, he was done with politics. When he decided to run for president, she confessed, "He wanted it and I did not do it." In the end, she agreed because "I thought Barack could be an excellent chair" .

After Barack's victory in 2008, Michelle finally found her way as the first lady and she writes at length about her advocacy for military families and girls and her campaign against childhood obesity. Sometimes her narrative of all this reads as an annotated resume, but she is proud of her accomplishments and perhaps fears that her legacy may be lost in the current political climate.

On the night of Donald Trump's election in 2016, Michelle apologized for the room where she and Barack and some friends were watching the returns. "I announced that I was going up," she writes. "I headed to the elevator, hoping to do only one thing, which was to block everything and put me to sleep. I understood what was happening, but I was not ready to deal with it. "

She shamelessly criticizes her husband's successor, and is interested in Trump's racist rhetoric and his years of false claims that Barack was not born in the United States. "All that was crazy and petty," she writes, "her underlying bigotry and xenophobia are barely hidden. But it was also dangerous, deliberately meant to stir the wing nuts and nuts. I feared the reaction. She blames Trump for her "strong and reckless insinuations" that put "the safety of her family at risk." And for that, I will never forgive him. "

Throughout "Becoming", Obama establishes an impressive balance by telling the truth about his challenges while repeatedly recognizing his lucky life. "I grew up with a disabled father in a too small house with little money in a neighborhood that is starting to collapse," she writes, "and I've also grown up surrounded love and music in a diverse city in a country where an education can take you far. I had nothing or I had everything. It depends on how you want to say it. "