Review Buku Becoming - Michelle Obama

Sekelumit Tentang Isi

An intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States.
 
Sebagai Ibu Negara Amerika Serikat pertama berdarah Afrika-Amerika, Michelle Obama tidak hanya berprestasi tapi juga menjadi salah satu wanita paling ikonik dan inspiratif saat ini. Dalam masa pemerintahan suaminya, ia membantu menciptakan Gedung Putih yang paling ramah dan inklusif dalam sejarah, dan pada saat yang sama juga membangun dirinya menjadi advokat yang kuat bagi setiap wanita serta anak perempuan di Amerika Serikat dan sekitarnya. Michelle Obama secara dramatis mengubah pola pikir tiap keluarga untuk memiliki tujuan hidup yang lebih sehat dan aktif. Ia dengan setia mendampingi suaminya saat Barack Obama memimpin Amerika melalui masa-masa yang paling mengerikan. Dan pada saat bersamaan berusaha tetap menjadi dirinya sendiri yang memiliki peran sebagai seorang ibu dari dua orang putri.
 
Dalam memoarnya yang mendalam, Michelle Obama mengundang pembaca masuk ke dunianya, mengikuti semua pengalaman hidup yang telah membentuknya — mulai dari masa kecilnya di South Side of Chicago hingga tahun-tahunnya sebagai seorang eksekutif yang berusaha menyeimbangkan tuntutan antara dunia kerja dan perannya sebagai istri dan ibu.

Tulisannya yang jujur dan hangat saat menceritakan kemenangan yang ia raih maupun kekecewaannya yang ia alami menggugah hati kita. Becoming tak pelak lagi merupakan biografi seorang wanita yang kisah hidupnya sangat menginspirasi.

Mari kita intip daftar isinya:

Preface

Becoming Me
Becoming Us
Becoming More
Epilogue

Acknowledgement

Sepertiga pertama buku ini mencakup masa kecil Michelle Obama ("Becoming Me"). Berlawanan dengan stereotip Demokrat sebagai partai elit, masa kecil Michelle Obama, setidaknya, adalah kelas pekerja. Dia dibesarkan di lingkungan South Shore kelas menengah bawah Chicago; ayahnya adalah operator boiler. Obama tumbuh di rumah tangga yang stabil di mana orang tuanya membuat tujuan dan ekspektasi yang jelas bagi anak-anaknya, meskipun kehidupan keluarga memiliki tantangan, terutama ayahnya sakit multiple sclerosis. Tapi Michelle Obama berhasil melanjutkan studinya ke Princeton, lalu Sekolah Hukum Harvard, dan kemudian bekerja di firma hukum Chicago yang sangat bergengsi di Sidley & Austin, tempat dia bertemu Barack. 

Di Bab Becoming Us, tahun-tahun awal bersama Barack diceritakan di sini. Tentang karir politik Barack yang berdampak pada pernikahan mereka, tentang konseling pasangan yang harus mereka lalui sebagai hasilnya.

Michelle Obama menutup sepertiga terakhir dari buku dengan apa yang mungkin merupakan bagian tersulit untuk ditulis. Di bab Becoming More, ia berbicara tentang stres, visinya sebagai ibu negara, dan pengalamannya sebagai istri orang nomor satu di Amerika Serikat dan ibu yang harus membesarkan dua anak pada saat yang bersamaan.

Buku yang saya baca adalah versi hardcovernya. Sejauh ini memang belum terlihat paperbacknya. Dengan halaman yang mencapai 400 lebih, buku Becoming lumayan nyaman dibaca karena ukuran huruf dan spasinya yang tidak terlalu kecil. Ada foto-foto dokumentasi juga sehingga membuat buku ini makin menarik untuk disimak.

Opini - Yang menarik dan atau disuka dari Buku ini

Preface adalah bab awal buku Becoming yang membuat saya yakin kalau buku ini bakal menarik untuk disimak. Bukan cuma karena pengalaman dan sudut pandangnya yang sudah pasti kaya, - misalnya -

When you’re First Lady, America shows itself to you in its extreme. I’ve been to fund-raisers in private homes that look more like art museums, houses where people own bathtubs made from gemstones. I’ve visited families who lost everything in Hurricane Katrina and were tearful and grateful just to have a working refrigerator and stove. I’ve encountered people I find to be shallow and hypocritical and others – teachers and military spouses and so many more – whose spirits are so deep and strong it’s astonishing. And I’ve met kids – lots of them, all over the world – who crack me up and fill me with hope and who blessedly manage to forget about my title once we start rooting around in the dirt of a garden.

Page x

Tapi kedetailan dan emosi di tiap tulisannya juga terasa mendalam, - misalnya -

And I was hungry, I walked down the stairs from out bedroom with the dogs following on my heels. In the kitchen, I opened the fridge. I found a loaf of bread, took out two pieces, and laid them in the toaster oven. I opened a cabinet and got out a plate. I know it’s a weird thing to say, but to take a plate from a shelf in the kitchen without anyone first insisting that they get it for me, to stand by myself watching bread turn brown in the toaster, feels as close to a return to my old life as I’ve come. Or maybe it’s my new life just beginning to announce itself.

Page xii

Detail ini juga ada dalam latar kisahnya, mulai dari yang sederhana, misalnya,

I moved into what had been my parents’ room, they rotated into what had been the kid’s room, and for the first time my brother and I had actual space for ourselves. My new bedroom was dreamy, complete with a blue-and-white floral bed skirt and pillow shams, a crisp navy-blue rug, and a white princess-style bed with a matching dresser and lamp – a near – exact replica of a full-page bedroom layout I'd liked in the Sears catalog and been allowed to get. Each of us ...

Page 49

Hingga suasana tertentu pun dengan sangat baik dideskripsikan, misalnya,

If you’ve never passed a winter in Chicago, let me describe it: You can live for a hundred straight days beneath an iron-gray sky that claps itself like a lid over the city. Frigid, biting winds blow in off the lake. Snow falls in dozens of ways, in heavy overnight dumps and daytime, sideways squalls, in demoralising sloppy sleet and fairy-tale billows of fluff. There’s ice, usually, lots of it, that shellacs the sidewalks and windshields that then need to be scraped. There’s the sound of that scraping in the early mornings – the hack hack hack of it – as people clear their cars to go to work. Your neighbors, unrecognisable in the thick layers they wear against the cold, keep their faces down to avoid the wind. City...

Page 51

Saya menyukai bagaimana Michelle Obama menceritakan kisah-kisah masa kecilnya. Ada cerita tentang ibunya, ayahnya, saudara laki-lakinya, keluarga besarnya, hingga teman dan lingkungan sekolahnya. Cerita sederhana tentang masa lalu yang penting dalam pembentukan karakter seorang Michelle.

It was a small but life-changing move. I didn't stop to ask myself then what would happen to all the kids who’d been left in the basement with the teacher who couldn't teach. Now that I'm an adult, i realize that kids know at a very young age when they’re being devalued, when adults arent invested enough to help them learn. Their anger over it can manifest itself as unruliness. It's hardly their fault. They aren't “bad kids.” They’re just trying to survive bad circumstances. At the time, though, I was just happy to have escaped. But I'd learn many years later that my mother, who is by nature wry and quiet but generally also the most forth right person in any room, made a point of seeking out the second-grade teacher and telling her, as kindly as possible, that she had no business teaching and should be working as a drugstore cashier instead.

Page 22

Melalui ceritanya itu, Michelle banyak mengajak saya untuk merenungkan kehidupan. Setidaknya Michelle kecil bahkan telah terlihat memiliki pendirian dan cara pandang sendiri terhadap sesuatu. Misalnya,

From here, Craig figured he could probably slide my dad’s body down the stairs and out the side door to safety. My father always refused to let him practise this part, saying gently, “That’s enough now,” and insisting on getting back to his feet before Craig could try to lug him down the stairs. But between the small man and the grown man, the point had been made. None of this would be easy or comfortable if it came to it, and there were, of course, no guarantees that any of us would survive. But if the very worst happened, we at least had a plan.

Page 35

Melalui kisahnya tentang Dandy, atau orang-orang lain yang ia ceritakan di dalam biografinya, saya mendapati sekali lagi kesadaran akan yang namanya diskriminasi. Pastilah sulit untuk bertahan dan berjuang di masa itu.

If this were an American Dream story, Dandy, who arrived in Chicago in the early 1930s, would have found a good job and a pathway to college. But the reality was far different. Jobs were hard to come by, limited at least somewhat by the fact that managers at some of the big factories in Chicago regurarly hired European immigrants over African American workers. Dandy took what work he could find, setting pins in a bowling alley and freelancing as a handyman. Gradually, he down graded his hope, letting go of the idea of college, thinking he’d train to become an electirician instead. But this, too, was quickly thwarted. If you wanted to work as an electrician (or as a steelworker, carpenter, or plumber, for that matter) on any of the big job sites in Chicago, you needed a union card. And if you were black, the overwhelming odds were that you weren't going to get one.

Page 38

Memahami betapa pengasuhan sejak dini telah membentuk masa depan Michelle Obama, misalnya,

Our parents had drilled into us the importance of using proper diction, of saying “going” instead of “goin” and “isn't” instead of “ain't”. We were taught to finish off our words. They bought us a dictionary and a full Encyclopaedia Britannica set, which lived on a shelf in the stairwell to our apartment, its titles etched in gold. Any time we had a question about a word, or a concept, or some piece of history, they directed us toward those books. Dandy, too, was an influence, meticulously correcting our grammar or admonishing us to enunciate our words when we went over for dinner. The idea was we were to transcend, to get ourselves further. They’d planned for it. They encourage it. We were expected not just to be smart but to own our smartness – to inhabit it with pride – and this filtered down to ow we spoke.

Page 40

Dengan jujur ia menceritakan ketakutan dan keraguannya, misalnya,

This was the doubt that sat in my mind through student orientation, through my first sessions of high school biology and English, through my somewhat fumbling get-to-know-you conversations in the cafetaria with new friends. Not enough. Not enough. It was doubt about where I came from an what I'd believed about myself until now. It was like a malignant cell that threatened to divide and divide again, unless I could find some way to stop it.

Page 56

Dengan mengangkat kisah banyak orang dalam hidupnya, saya merasa Michelle Obama begitu rendah hati dan penuh kasih, yang dengan itu membuat saya ingin terus membaca buku ini hingga selesai. Misalnya,

I loved the little jold of satisfaction. But more than anything, i loved my boss, Czerny Brasuell.

Czerny was a smart and beautiful black woman, barely thirty years old, a swift-moving and lively New Yorker who wore flared jeans and wedge sandals and seemed always to be having four or five ideas at once. For students of color at Princeton, she was like an uber-mentor, our ultraip and always outspoken defender in chief, and for this she was universally appreciated. In the office, she juggled multiple projects – lobbying the university ...

Page 76

Ada juga cerita tentang kekasihnya saat kuliah, yang membuatnya bisa 'bersantai' sejenak dari kekakuan dan keseriusan dirinya.

Here’s a memory, which like most memories is imperfect and subjective – collected long ago like a beach pebble and slipped into the pocket of my mind. It’s from sophomore year of college and involves Kevin, my football-player boyfriend.

Kevin is from Ohio and a near-impossible combination of tall, sweet, and rugged. He’s a safety for the Tigers, fast on his feet and fearless with ..

..

And that’s it. It’s a small moment, insignificant in the end. It’s still with me for no reason but the silliness, for how it unpinned me just briefly from the more serious agenda that guided my every day. Because while I was a social student who continued to lounge through communal mealtimes and had no problem trying to own the dance floor at Third...

Page 87-88

Semua orang yang Michelle ceritakan memiliki makna dalam hidupnya. Setiap mereka memberikan pelajaran kehidupan.

 
Lalu, datanglah momen pertemuan pertama dengan Barack Obama. Saya menyimak bagian ini dengan rasa penasaran.

You’ve climbed the mountain. And part of your job, aside from parsing abstract intellectual property issues for big corporations, is to help cultivate the next set of young lawyers being courted by the firm. A senior partner asks if you’ll mentor an incoming summer associatem and the answer is easy: Of course you will. You have yet to understand the altering force of a simple yes. You don't know that when a memo arrives to confirm the assignment, some deep and unseen fault line in your life has begun to tremble, that some hold is already starting to slip. Next to your name is another name, that of some hotshot law student who’s busy climbing his own ladder. Like you, he’s black and from Harvard. Other than that, you know nothing – just the name, and it’s an odd one.

Page 93

Ada banyak bagian yang menceritakan perasaan dan pikiran Michelle Obama terhadap Barack Obama. Menarik sekali untuk mengetahui seperti apa mantan Presiden AS yang satu ini di mata orang terdekatnya. Misalnya,

Barrack intrigued me. He was not like anyone I'd dated before, mainly because he seemed so secure. He was openly affectionate. He told me I was beautiful. He made me feel good. To me, he was sort of like unicorn – unusual to the point of seeming almost unreal. He never talked about material things, like buying a house or a car or even new shoes. His money went largely toward books, which to him were like sacred object, providing ballast for his mind. He read late into the night, often long after I’d fallen asleep, plowing through history and biographies and toni Morisson, too. He read several newspapers daily, cover to cover. He keep tabs on the latest book reviews, the American League standings, and what the South Side aldermen were up to. He could speak with equal passion about Polish elections and which movies Roger Ebert had panned and why.

Page 112

 
Bagian-bagian yang menceritakan Indonesia juga ada. Misalnya,

As Barack desribed it to me, he’d been happy in Indonesia and got along well with his new stepfather,...

Page 115

Dan ternyata Barack Obama menyelesaikan bukunya yang pertama di Sanur Bali.

Tak cuma kegembiraan akan cinta yang datang, episode kehidupan yang sedih dan penuh duka pun ada.

In the span of a year, I’d gained Barack and lost Suzanne, and the power of those two things together had left me spinning. Suzanne’s sudden death had awakened me to the idea that I wanted more joy and meaning in my life. I couldn't continue to live wth my own complacency.

Page 133

I sat in a chair next to his bed and watched him laboring to breathe. When I put my hand in his, he gave it a comforting squeeze. We looked at each other silently. There was too much to say, and at the same time it felt as if we'd said everything. What was left was only one truth. We were reaching the end. He would not recover. He was going to miss the whole rest of my life. I was losing his steadiness, his comfort, his everyday joy. I felt tears spilling down my cheeks.

Page 142

It hurts to live after someone has died. It just does. It can hurt to walk down a hallway or open the fridge. It hurts to put on a pair of socks, to brush your teeth. Food tastes like nothing. Colors go flat. Music hurts, and so do memories. You look at somethhing youd otherwise find beautiful – a purple sky at sunset or a playground full of kids- and it only somehow deepens the loss. Grief is so lonely this way.

Page 144

Pernikahannya dengan Barack juga tak selalu mulus. Ternyata mereka bahkan pernah sampai harus ke konselor pernikahan. Lika-liku kehidupan rumah tangga Obama menginspirasi saya juga.

“I do recognize the value of individuals having their own interests, ambitions, and dreams,” I wrote in my journal. “But I don't believe that the pursuit of one person’s dreams should come at the expense of the couple.”

Page 140

In our six years together, he hadn't once doubted my instincts or my capabilites. The refrain had always been the same: Don't worry. You can do this. We’ll figure it out.

Page 183

Terutama di bagian ketika mereka kesulitan untuk memiliki keturunan. Kedua putri mereka ternyata lahir dengan program in vitro. Cerita lengkapnya bisa dibaca sendiri di buku.

Seeing women and their children walking happily along a street, I’d feel a pang of longing followed by a bruising wallop of inadequacy. The only comfort was that Barack and I were living only about a block from Craig and his wife, who now had two beautiful children, Leslie and Avery. I found solace in dropping by to play and read stories with them.

...

Page 187

Bagian yang menceritakan fase kehidupan politik juga ada. Di mulai dari masa awal Barack Obama terjun ke dunia politik hingga periode akhir masa kepresidenannya.

In Chicago, meanwhile, the political chatter was starting to kick up again. Mayor Daley had been elected to a third term in the spring of 1995, and now everyone was gearing up for the 1996 election, in which Illinois would select a new U.S. senator and President Clinton would make his bid for a second term. More scandalously, ...

Page 182

Atau cerita-cerita kelam di mana Michelle Obama dijatuhkan namanya oleh berbagai orang lewat media. Misalnya,

Melissa called me one day at home to let me know about a snarky column written by Maureen Dowd of the New York Times. In it, she referred to me as a “princess of South Chigago,” suggesting that I was emasculating Barack when I spoke publicly about how he didnt pick up his socks or put the butter back in the fridge. For me, it had always been important that people see Barack as human and not as asome otherworldly savior. Maureen Dowd would have prefferedm apparently, that I adopt the painted-on smile and the adoring gaze. I found it odd and sad that such a harsh critique would come from another professional woman, someone who had not bothered to get to know me but was now trying to shape my story in a cyncal way.

Page 241

Namun di atas semua itu, yang paling saya sukai adalah semangat, kecerdasan, kepercayaan diri, dan kebaikan hati yang dimiliki Michelle Obama yang tak pernah hilang.
 

I knew what mattered to me. I didn't want to be some sort of welldressed ornament who showed up at parties and ribbon cuttings, I wanted to do things that were purposeful and lasting. My first real effort, I decided, would be the garden.

Page 310

I flew home propelled by that spirit. Life was teaching me that progress and change happen slowly. Not it two years, four years, or even a lifetime. We were planting seeds of change, the fruit of which we might never see. We had to be patient.

Page 370

Foto-foto dokumentasi yang ada di buku juga menarik untuk disimak.

Ini mungkin buku pertama yang saya dapati memiliki rating setinggi ini di Amazon. Dengan poin mencapai 4.9/5 dari 9.555 reviewer, buku Becoming - Michelle Obama menempati urutan pertama di Amazon. Orang-orang menyukai semangat, empati, sudut pandang, dan cara Michelle Obama menuliskan kisah hidupnya. Kehangatan, kasih sayang, kepeduliannya yang tulus membuat hati banyak orang tersentuh. Ia juga bijak ketika harus mengisahkan bagian karir politik suaminya serta masa-masa kehidupan mereka di gedung putih. Inspirasi adalah inti sari buku Becoming. Rating Goodreads untuk buku Becoming lebih rendah dari Amazon yakni 4.67/5. Mereka yang memberikan rating rendah menyatakan kekecewaan mereka karena menganggap buku yang ditulis Michelle Obama terlalu sempurna, ditulis dengan sangat hati-hati sehingga hilang sentuhan personalnya, dan lebih mirip buku biografi ketimbang autobiografi.

Saya pribadi sangat menyukai buku ini. Sulit untuk tidak menyukai tulisan Michelle Obama karena terasa begitu mewakili perasaan dan pikiran seorang wanita. Detail dan emosinya terasa. Rapi menginspirasi. Hangat dan menyentuh. Saya yang tidak begitu menyukai politik tadinya sempat mengkhawatirkan bobot episode perpolitikan di buku ini, tapi ternyata komposisi ceritanya pas, dan tetap disampaikan dari sudut pandang Michelle Obama sebagai seorang istri dan ibu. Informasi seputar kehidupan Michelle Obama juga lengkap, termasuk kisah-kisah menarik dalam kehidupan rumah tangga mereka atau periode kehidupannya di White House. Jika ada yang menyatakan buku ini terlalu sempurna dan rapi untuk ukuran sebuah karya autobiografi, saya cenderung menganggap bahwa Michelle Obama memang mampu menulis sebaik itu. Bagaimana pun pada akhirnya, sebuah buku yang sangat menginspirasi seperti Becoming layak untuk mendapatkan apreasiasi yang tinggi.

Siapa Michelle Obama

Michelle Robinson Obama menjabat sebagai Ibu Negara Amerika Serikat dari 2009 hingga 2017. Setelah lulus dari Universitas Princeton dan Sekolah Hukum Harvard, ia memulai karirnya sebagai pengacara di firma hukum Chicago Sidley & Austin, di mana ia bertemu dengan calon suaminya. , Barack Obama. Dia kemudian bekerja di kantor walikota Chicago, di Universitas Chicago, dan di Pusat Medis Universitas Chicago. Michelle Obama juga mendirikan cabang Chicago Public's Allies, sebuah organisasi yang mempersiapkan kaum muda untuk berkarier dalam pelayanan publik.

Becoming mendapatkan rating 4.9 di situs Amazon dan 4.67 di Goodreads.

Rekomendasi

Saya rekomendasikan buku ini kepada semua orang.

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