Becoming

Michelle Obama

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2018

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface-Part 1, Chapter 2

Part 1, Chapters 3-5

Part 1, Chapters 6-8

Part 2, Chapters 9-11

Part 2, Chapters 12-14

Part 2, Chapters 15-17

Part 2, Chapter 18-Part 3, Chapter 20

Part 3, Chapters 21-23

Part 3, Chapter 24-Epilogue

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Themes

The Importance of One’s Own Story

In the Preface of the memoir, Michelle first introduces the idea of the importance of telling one’s own story, rather than allowing others to speak for you. Michelle explains, “Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own” (x). This statement explains Michelle’s desire to write her memoir and speak about her time in the White House for herself, rather than relying on others to comment on the decisions she made and the way she fulfilled her role as the First Lady of the United States. Michelle first came to understand the importance of speaking for herself when she was helping Barack campaign for the presidential election in 2008. At the time, Michelle had little experience with politics, and she had no idea how to cope with the kind of international attention that she was suddenly receiving.

Commentators picked apart her facial expressions, her clothing, her height, her career choices, and everything in between: “It was as if there were some cartoon version of me out there wreaking havoc […] a too-tall, too-forceful, ready-to-emasculate Godzilla of a political wife named Michelle Obama” (264). Though Michelle is tempted to step out of the limelight, she instead harnesses the power of her voice. After receiving some training from Barack’s campaign team, Michelle tells her story on a national platform at the Democratic National Convention. On the campaign trail, she puts herself forward to get to know people: “I’ve learned that it’s harder to hate up close” (270). Rather than hiding herself to avoid criticism, Michelle learns to use her story to inspire other people with similar backgrounds and obstacles in life. Over time, she learns, “There’s power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your own unique story, in using your authentic voice” (420). In sharing her story, Michelle hopes to inspire others to not be afraid to share their own.

Race, Privilege, and Access to Opportunities

Throughout her life, Michelle encounters privilege in many forms. One of the places that privilege most stands out to Michelle is at Princeton University, where she is surrounded by mostly white peers, many of whom come from far wealthier backgrounds. Michelle strongly feels her difference from others at Princeton, recognizing the divergent opportunities they had growing up. Despite facing more obstacles to get to Princeton than many of her white peers, Michelle often believed that she was held up to harsher standards: “You could almost read the scrutiny in the gaze of certain students and even some professors, as if they wanted to say, ‘I know why you’re here’” (78). Yet the more time Michelle spends in these privileged circles, the more she realizes that these peers aren’t necessarily better or smarter than her; they’ve just had more opportunities. She muses, “They were simply emboldened, floating on an ancient tide of superiority, buoyed by the fact that history had never told them anything different” (79).

Michelle sees this process continued when she is hired at a prestigious law firm in Chicago, where most of her colleagues are white. She realizes again that it isn’t inherent superiority but advantages of birth that allow her white colleagues to succeed: “It was a circular process: one generation of lawyers hiring new lawyers whose life experience mirrored their own, leaving little room for diversity of any sort” (120). Michelle soon resolves to leave the safety of the law firm for work that allows her to empower people who otherwise wouldn’t have access to the same resources that people from affluent neighborhoods take for granted. Her work in the White House similarly revolves around educating, empowering, and emboldening people from underprivileged backgrounds to show them they have every right to dream and work for the best things in life, even if their path to these goals might be more uneven.

Becoming

The title of the memoir, and many of the subtitles that break up the book, revolve around the idea of becoming: growing, changing, and evolving through a series of events and experiences. Michelle uses the idea of becoming to root her narrative, indicating that she didn’t just take on the role of the First Lady of the United States one day; many factors in her life impacted her path to reaching that point. Michelle details her family, her childhood in the South Side of Chicago, her time at Princeton, her shift from working as a lawyer to pursuing community outreach, her marriage to Barack Obama, and her efforts as a working mother, all to show the factors that most impacted her path to becoming First Lady and the decisions she made while fulfilling that role. In addition, the title Becoming suggests that Michelle’s life is still a work in progress. Being First Lady was merely one role in Michelle’s life, one fragment of time that informs the person she currently is.

In the Epilogue of the memoir, she writes, “At fifty-four, I am still in progress, and I hope that I always will be” (418). The theme of becoming reflects Michelle’s progress as a person, but it also symbolically ties to the state of America. Michelle knows that many people worry for the future of the United States with so much racial and political division, but she suggests that the country is constantly in a state of shifting and evolving into something new. Barack and Michelle did their best to instill a certain set of values during their time in office, but eight years is not long enough to overhaul hundreds of years of history, oppression, and systemic failures. Yet Michelle remains hopeful for the future, noting that becoming “isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim” (418); instead, she suggests that becoming is a “forward motion,” and “a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end” (418). Just like Michelle’s time as First Lady is only a small portion of her life, this is only a small moment of American history, and the country is still moving toward its fuller potential. Michelle hopes and believes that the future can be better than anything that has previously come before.