Book #68 of 2024:
The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times by Michelle Obama
As a follow-up to her acclaimed 2018 title Becoming, this 2022 release from former First Lady Michelle Obama isn’t nearly so noteworthy. Whereas that debut work was a powerful but straightforward memoir, this one blends the autobiographical genre with self-help, to somewhat mixed effect. Some pieces of advice here, like strategies for channeling your fears, dealing with anxiety, and advocating for yourself and your marginalized background, seem genuinely useful! Others I feel more skeptical towards, especially when they register as empty generational complaints about participation trophies, actions and relations in the outside world being inherently more meaningful than their digital equivalents, and so on. And since the author doesn’t cite any particular experts or studies to support her various claims, it all reads like just a catalog of tools she’s anecdotally found to work well for challenges in her own life situation — which is obviously quite different from what the rest of us are going through!
The best sections are those which do focus specifically on her own experiences, and I’m glad that they mostly cover separate material from Becoming. But I think I would have preferred a second volume that was entirely in that vein, rather than this hybrid approach.
★★★☆☆
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