Becoming
Michelle Obama's intimate memoir tracing her life from the South Side of Chicago to the White House.
Where Becoming keeps showing up
One of our editors' lists features this novel.
Books in conversation with Becoming
A few of the closest reads from our full list.
What you might want to know about Becoming
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Michelle Obama walks through her South Side childhood, her years at Princeton and Harvard Law, the Chicago courtship, and the eight years her family spent inside the White House and the public eye.
Yes. Becoming is Michelle Obama's 2018 memoir covering her childhood in Chicago, her career, her marriage to Barack Obama, and her years as First Lady from 2009 to 2017. It is a first-person autobiographical account.
Becoming sold over 17 million copies and was the best-selling book of 2018 in the United States. It won the NAACP Image Award and several Goodreads Choice Awards. A 2020 Netflix documentary of the same name follows the book tour.
Becoming was written by Michelle Obama, published in 2018 by Home.
Becoming is 464 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Becoming takes most readers 7 to 10 hours to finish.
Becoming is a standalone novel by Michelle Obama, not part of a series.
Becoming is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
