WRITE IT DOWN

Michelle Obama to Release ‘Becoming’ Companion Book

The new book is intended to help readers capture their life journeys, as Obama did in writing her memoir.

Former first lady Michelle Obama is releasing a second book to accompany her extremely popular memoir Becoming. The new book, Becoming: A Guided Journal for Discovering Your Voice, is intended to help readers capture their life journeys, as Obama did in writing her memoir. The book will feature “more than 150 inspiring questions and quotes that resonate with key themes in Mrs. Obama’s memoir and that are designed to help readers reflect on their personal and family history, their goals, challenges, and dreams, what moves them and brings them hope, and what future they imagine for themselves and their community,” according to publisher Penguin Random House.

The book will also feature an introduction by Obama. In an excerpt from the introduction, the former first lady writes about how she rediscovered the value of journaling in writing her memoir. “The experience left me asking myself, ‘Why didn’t I journal more?’ The answer, like for so many of you, I’m sure, was that I simply got busy,” she writes. “... I didn’t journal much because I talked myself out of it... The idea being that once you put pen to paper, your thoughts have extra weight and meaning. What I recognize now, though, is far more simple: We don’t have to remember everything. But everything we remember has value.” The guided journal is set to be released Nov. 19.