Becoming is still a political memoir; it functions partly to solidify Barack Obama’s legacy as a complex and multilayered milestone for the country. The book makes the case for the Obama family as definitively American, for Michelle Obama’s concerns as worries that derive from the universal anxieties of marriage and motherhood. Still, Becoming is satisfying for the quiet moments in which Mrs. Obama, the woman who supported a black man named Barack all the way to the presidency, gets to let down her hair and breathe as Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, girl of the South Side.

Her honesty translates. More importantly, her intention translates, to remind her country of what’s being lost — what she witnessed during the Obama years, what guided their presidency: “a sense of progress, the comfort of compassion…. A glimmer of the world as it could be.” May decency reign again.

But mirroring the constraints of what she could do and say as first lady, she is also restrained in her writing here. She doesn't question the world of the White House here the way she thoughtfully appraises 1970s South Side Chicago.

And while Obama is clearly passionate about her top causes as first lady, such as gardening with kids and meeting veterans' families, ultimately this is a section where Obama seems most like any politician, lapsing far more often into the policy speak that peppered the early chapters.

Which is to say: This is where her protective walls seem to go up.

The question is how miffed to get about this. On the one hand, Michelle Obama, like any former first lady, doesn't owe us any juicy details about her life. On the other hand, she is writing a memoir here, complete with a nationwide book tour.