Nightstands & Coffee Tables

Becoming
by Michelle Obama | review by Meredith McKinnie

In the former First Lady’s autobiographical memoir, readers are shown an intimate look at the woman herself. To the public, she emerged out of her husband’s shadow, but in the book she has created a space all her own, from her meager beginnings on the southside of Chicago, to one of the few black female students at Princeton University, to a high-rise office at a fancy law firm where she lacked fulfillment, and then the White House, with the eyes of skeptical Americans on her constantly. She writes with style and grace, using anecdotes to relay personal truths, to capture an unimaginable experience for most of us, but even more so for a little African-American girl.

The Preface begins the day after President Obama left office, where for the first time in a decade, Michelle returns to the pleasure of making her own cup of coffee, in her own home apart from Pennsylvania Avenue. She can reflect from outside the bubble of Washington, once again separate from the forefront of politics. The story is not so much a love letter to her husband, or to America, but more so to little girls, from the viewpoint of a little girl. She claims her parents never “sugar-coated hard truths.” Perhaps that is why she is able to speak about hardship so eloquently; the ideas have had time to marinate.

She speaks about discrimination not as a chastisement, but rather from the experience of her grandfather Dandy who no matter how hard he worked would not be promoted but for the color of his skin; how her father never said he had to work harder, but just did so because he understood the rules he didn’t make. She makes her opinions known through the stories from her past. We don’t just learn what she thinks, but why. When her neighborhood friends ask Michelle why she speaks like a white girl, she realizes she is caught between two worlds, one where her parents make sure she attends the best schools, but that those schools often separate her from the kids on her street.

As a mother of two little girls, she shows Malia and Sasha a different perspective, one where life does not wait on the man of the house to get home, independently saying, “We don’t wait on dad. It is his job now to catch up with us.” She admits having the utmost belief in her husband’s values, principles, and enormity of heart, but never believing he could win the nomination, let alone the presidency. She recounts the kindness of the Bushes during the family’s first visit to the White House and throughout their tenure, and the tenacity of a soldier badly burned in a military hospital who fought just to stand and salute the wife of his Commander-in-Chief. America showed her its strength, its beauty, its humanity up close. From her position, she saw America in its extremes, and her powerful perspective is evident in the voice of this woman and the pages of this book.

Little Fires Everywhere
by Celest Ng | review by Meredith McKinnie

“Here, she found, everything had nuance; everything had an unrevealed side or unexplored depths. Everything was worth looking at more closely.”

After her debut novel, Everything I Never Told You, Celeste Ng’s second book came highly anticipated and delivers the powerful punch of a vividly detailed story with intricate layers of humanity, its flaws and the power of personal redemption. The story begins in the privileged suburb of Cleveland called Shaker Heights, where the people are raised on principle and duty, in a microcosm of America isolated from poverty and struggle. Reputation is paramount, and family name and status matter. When the local Richardson family rents a property to Mia and her daughter Pearl, the quest for answers about the duo with no known history and vagabond lifestyle becomes the goal of matriarch Elena Richardson.

The story opens with the Richardson family home burning to the ground, little fires having been started in each of the bedrooms with the suspected culprit being the wayward Richardson daughter Izzy. And while it would seem the story would be an investigation into why, it’s more so about the little fires within each of us. Mia and Pearl have learned to survive on very little, traveling from town to town, recreating their little world in each new home for six-month periods. The Richardsons have known nothing but stability and comfort, having never ventured outside Shaker Heights, yet are intrigued by these new characters who understand life better than their meager reality should allow. Hardship and change have a way of bringing about self-confidence and an innate ability to adapt to any environment.

When a local family’s adoption of a newborn rocks Shaker Heights; the locals find themselves at odds over a respect for culture and biology in the raising of a child. In a community so centered on its structure, the firm hold on tradition and keeping secrets secret, the exposure of the fragility of it all scares the locals. They’re not sure what to hold on to, what really matters anymore. The fear of change is battling the fear of not changing. Does humanity trump tradition? Should the rules be rewritten?

Celeste Ng pays detailed attention to character development, slowly unfolding each person’s layers individually and in relation to one another. As much is revealed via contrast as it is through the characters’ own words and actions. The story reveals how quickly we are to judge others based on circumstance more so than character, how when life forces us to reexamine what we’ve always thought, the challenge can prove daunting for those defined by what’s always come easy. As readers, we anxiously turn each page wondering what Mia and Pearl are running from and what each one of the Richardson’s are running to. We see the two families becoming more intertwined as they become more suspicious of each other’s motives. And we can’t help but consider the simmering coals of our own burning fires, some sparked long ago, and others waiting for the match.