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Becoming summary

Name: Becoming
Rating: 4.5 (574 reviews)
Author: Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama

The intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States

4.5 (574 ratings)

36 mins

Brief summary

Becoming by Michelle Obama is an inspiring memoir that shares her journey from the South Side of Chicago to the White House.

Topics

Women's Stories Memoirs Political Figures

Table of Contents

Becoming
Summary of 12 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 12

What’s in it for me? The inspirational story of one woman’s journey from Chicago’s South Side to the White House.

The date: April 1, 2009. The location: London. The precise location: Buckingham Palace.

For Michelle and Barack Obama, it’s a big day. Back in January, Barack was inaugurated as president of the United States. Now, he and Michelle are attending the reception of the G20 summit – and they’re regarded as newcomers on the world stage. Here’s Michelle, who grew up on Chicago’s South Side, rubbing shoulders and eating canapés with Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy. It’s exciting – but she’s not quite sure how to behave amid the strange newness of the old world.

Near the end of the party, the Queen of England appears suddenly on Michelle’s right. Both have spent the evening engaged in small talk, adhering to strict formal protocol. So the mood seems to lighten when the Queen looks at Michelle’s pumps and says, “Well, those shoes are rather unpleasant, are they not?” They both admit that their feet hurt – and have a good laugh together. At this moment, following a natural impulse, Michelle lays her hand on the Queen’s back, as she’d do with any other person she’d just formed a human connection with.

What she didn’t know at the time was that she’d breached the protocol – massively. The yellow press acted as if she’d committed a heinous crime, or at least a monstrous faux pas. How dare she touch her Royalty! But rather than hiding her face in shame, Michelle stood by the gesture. It may not have been the correct thing to do. But it was the human thing to do. And what's more, the Queen had returned the gesture, placing her hand, in its white glove, on Michelle's back.

This little scene reveals a lot about the warm character of Michelle Obama: She’s a strong yet affectionate woman, who wants to do everything the right way and still seeks to find common ground. And yes, she’s also controversial. These blinks will tell you her life story, and how she became what she is today.

An Ambitious Beginning

One of Michelle Obama’s earliest memories is the sound of plinking piano keys. To her ears, this was the sound of ambition. In the room beneath her bedroom, Michelle’s great-aunt Robbie taught piano lessons. On any given day, Michelle could hear the sounds of Robbie’s students desperately fumbling through their songs. The sound of this amateurish music made such an impression on Michelle that, at the age of four, she became ambitious, too. Michelle was certain that she wanted to learn the piano.

This was near the end of the sixties, in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood. It was a time of political turmoil and social unrest, but Michelle was too young to have understood much about what was going on outside her home. Her close-knit family included her brother, Craig, who was older by two years; her father, who worked at a water filtration plant and loved the Chicago Cubs baseball team; and her mother, who was a wiz with a sewing needle and active in community fundraising.

One of the things that really brought their family together was music. At home, her father was always playing jazz records. And over at her grandfather’s place, every room had a speaker hooked up to the stereo system; at family gatherings, a cocktail of voices and horns filled the house: Ella Fitzgerald, John Coltrane, Miles Davis. It was her grandfather, known to everyone as “Southside,” who bought Michelle her first record: Stevie Wonder’s Talking Book.

But learning how to play music was a different story. What’s more, Robbie was stiff and strict. Her posture was impeccable. Her reading glasses always hung around her neck, threatening scrutiny. She scolded her students often. Nevertheless, Michelle was eager to win her approval.

If you’ve taken piano lessons, you know that one of the first steps is learning to find the middle C. Middle C functions like a musical landmark; knowing where it is enables you to position your hands correctly on the keys. But when you’re four years old and sitting in front of 88 keys, finding middle C is no easy task. Fortunately, on Robbie’s piano, this key was chipped, making it easy to spot.

For the most part, Michelle was a keen student and made quick progress – a little too quick, as far as Robbie was concerned. Before long, Michelle tried to skip ahead to more advanced songs in the playbook. Far from impressing Robbie, this infuriated her, and she insisted Michelle do as she was told and go one step at a time.

Then came Michelle’s first big recital. Once a year, Robbie would present her students to an audience at Roosevelt University’s music hall. Michelle put her hair in pigtails and wore a cute dress. She was ready to shine. But then, when she took her seat at the piano, she froze. There was no chipped key. Where was the middle C?

That’s when Robbie came to the rescue. She calmly walked onto the stage, reached over her shoulder like a guardian angel and pointed. Michelle could now start her recital.

Learning Confidence

Michelle grew up around people who were striving. Striving to make the most of what they had, and striving to give their children better opportunities than the ones they grew up with. Even as an elementary school student, Michelle strove to do well at school. However, given her circumstances, it wasn’t always easy to shine.

For instance, when Michelle started second grade, she was stuck in a class full of chaotic kids, with a helpless teacher unable to get things under control. Luckily, when Michelle explained how much she hated this class, her mom listened and soon had her tested and moved up to a third-grade class with other high-performing kids who liked to learn.

New School, New Role Model

Michelle was attracted to Princeton, in part, because her brother, Craig, was already enrolled there and had quickly become a star on the basketball team, much to their father’s delight. So Michelle wasn’t completely alone when she first stepped foot on the university’s pristine New Jersey campus. But that doesn’t mean the campus felt like a second home. Far from it, in fact.

On her first day at Princeton, Michelle dropped off her belongings in her dormroom and looked out her window to see a wave of students – mostly white, mostly male – lugging their belongings across campus. This was a new feeling for Michelle, to be somewhere where she was one of the only nonwhite people. In fact, Michelle’s freshman class was less than 9 percent Black. It was, in her words, like being a poppy seed in a bowl of rice.

A Date to Remember

After finishing Harvard Law School in 1988, Michelle moved back to Chicago to join Sidley & Austin, a prestigious law firm. Part of Michelle’s job was to advise promising law students and possibly set them up to join the firm when they graduated. It was in this context that Michelle met a young hotshot named Barack Obama.

Before she ever met him, Michelle had heard people talking about this striking young man, but Michelle was skeptical. Harvard professors were calling him the most gifted student they had ever worked with. Yet, in Michelle’s experience, white professors often went cuckoo over any half-smart black man in a nice suit. Plus, he had the gall to show up late to their first appointment. And worst of all, he was a smoker!

Changes and Loss

What should have been an exciting time of new love was mostly a time of frustration, since Barack had to finish up at Harvard. To his credit, the school made him the first Black editor of the school’s prestigious journal, the Harvard Law Review.

And while the new couple were trying to make the best of a long-distance relationship, Michelle received some disturbing news. Her father was in the hospital.

Uneasy Approval

One sweaty summer night, early in their relationship, Michelle accompanied Barack to a church basement in Roseland, a neighborhood deep in the South Side of Chicago. People there had been struggling to rebuild their community after factory closings. Barack wanted to help. But in this cramped, fluorescent-lit basement, a group of mostly older women were highly skeptical of this well-dressed young Black man. What could he possibly do to help?

Michelle marvelled as Barack slowly won over the group. He spoke about the power of political engagement. Are you going to give up, or fight for a better world? He implored them to vote and to put pressure on their local representatives. By the end, the women were shouting “Amen!”

The Dark Side of Politics

If there is one apparent difference between Michelle and Barack, it’s how they handle confrontations and personal attacks: Barack has the amazing ability to roll with the punches, while Michelle finds it difficult to brush off someone’s hurtful remark. In their life together so far, this difference hadn’t been much of an issue. But when you enter politics, you’re essentially opening the door to personal attacks and baseless accusations – and this can be a difficult thing to get used to, especially if you’re someone like Michelle.

One of the first incidents to really affect Michelle came in late 1999, when Barack was in the middle of a primary campaign for a seat in the House of Representatives. His opponents were fellow Democrats Bobby Rush and Donne Trotter.

A Change of Heart

Michelle’s opinion of politics didn’t exactly improve as time went on. In his role as a state senator, Barack was absent a lot. Simply finding the time to enjoy a family dinner together was a rare treat. In fact, Barack’s absence became such an issue that they eventually entered couples counseling. So when the idea of running for the US Senate was brought up, Michelle wasn’t thrilled.

What Michelle didn’t tell him at the time was that she truly doubted he would win. After all, he’d lost a congressional primary not long before. So Michelle did give her approval, but she made him promise that, if he lost, he would give up politics and find another way to make a difference in the world. As fate would have it, this time his Republican opponent dropped out of the race!

Fighting for Normalcy

Everything changed during the 2008 presidential campaign. The husband she once knew became a blur – a man in constant motion who needed to be everywhere at once. And then there were the threats, which meant that Barack received a secret-service security detail earlier than any other candidate in history.

Michelle understood the reasons for the heightened security, but she also worried about how this unusual life on the campaign trail would affect her kids. So, with the nation following their every move, Michelle tried to keep things as normal as possible.

A First Lady

There were some positive aspects to life in the White House. One immediate benefit was that Barack no longer had to make long daily commutes. The Oval Office was literally downstairs from where they lived! Oddly enough, as president, Barack was present for far more dinners than he ever was as a senator.

But now Michelle faced a new and very unique challenge: being the First Lady. Unfortunately, the job doesn’t come with a playbook. Nevertheless, Michelle was highly aware that the world was going to be watching. And since Michelle was not only First Lady but first African-American First Lady, the world was sure to be watching extra closely, and just waiting for a misstep.

A Failed Date and An Ugly Reminder

When you’re the First Lady of the United States, going out on a date with your husband isn’t so easy. Nevertheless, during the first term, Michelle and Barack tried to carve out a night for themselves. It felt like ages since they’d been on a date, and the idea of dinner and a Broadway play seemed too amazing to pass up. Sure, it might require some serious planning, but it would be worth it, right?

As it turned out, not so much. The presidential motorcade brought New York traffic to a grinding halt, and people at both the restaurant and the theater had to go through security checks. It wasn’t just embarrassing; it opened the door to a parade of negative press.

Epilogue

Michelle Obama’s life has been one of striving – striving to excel as a student, a professional, a mom and a First Lady. Along the way, she learned to better understand who she was as an individual and what she wanted to do with her life, rather than striving to fulfill some predetermined expectation. Michelle became her own independent woman – a working mom who could help her kids as well as the people in her community. And just because she may have reached a certain point in her life, it doesn’t mean she’ll ever stop striving to help others.

Looking back, she can see that her time in the White House yielded quite a few successes. Along with the Let’s Move! program, which brought healthier school lunches to 45 million kids and signed up 11 million kids to associated afterschool programs, there was also the Joining Forces initiative, which helped 1.5 million veterans and their spouses get jobs. Meanwhile, her Let Girls Learn initiative raised billions of dollars to help girls around the world gain access to schools, along with the empowerment that can come with an education. These were certainly great achievements. But there’s an achievement that, for Michelle, is greater still: despite the countless demands of holding public office, she and her husband were able to raise two amazing daughters.

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What is Becoming about?

Becoming (2018) tells the story of Michelle Obama, née Robinson. Born to loving parents in a working-class Chicago neighborhood, she grew into a strong, independent woman, who just happened to meet and fall in love with a man named Barack Obama. This is the life story of a woman who didn’t expect to become the first African-American First Lady, yet found a way to continue exercising her own unique voice under the most unusual and trying of circumstances.

Becoming Review

Becoming (2018) offers a deeply personal account of Michelle Obama's life. Here's why you should read it:

The book provides a unique, intimate look into the life and experiences of a former First Lady.

It explores themes of identity, race, and womanhood, resonating with a wide range of readers.

Michelle Obama's candor and warmth make the book both engaging and relatable.
Experience Michelle Obama's extraordinary journey by reading Becoming.

Best quote from Becoming

Then, turning back with the smallest smile of encouragement, she left me to play my song.

—Michelle Obama

Who should read Becoming?

People who enjoy an inspirational story
Working moms
Anyone eager to make a difference

About the Author

Michelle Obama graduated from Princeton University before attending Harvard Law School and then joining the prestigious Chicago law firm Sidley & Austin. She worked in the mayor’s office of Chicago’s City Hall before becoming the Executive Director of the youth mentoring program Public Allies. After this, she worked as the Executive Director for Community Affairs for the University of Chicago Medical Center. Since becoming the First Lady of the United States, she has written numerous books and been an advocate for children’s health and the issues facing military families.

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