becoming michelle obama summary essay

Michelle Obama

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Michelle Obama (born Michelle Robinson) grows up on the South Side of Chicago, in a neighborhood slowly being deserted by white and wealthy families. Michelle’s family (which includes her mother , her father , and her older brother Craig ) is a very tight-knit, middle-class family living together in a small apartment upstairs from her great-aunt Robbie and her great-uncle Terry . Despite the fact that Michelle’s family is not very affluent, she has a happy childhood—largely due to the sacrifices and investment of her family and the adults around her. She learns piano from Robbie, her mother teaches her to read early, and she works hard to get a good education.

Michelle’s childhood is not without its hiccups and challenges, however. When she attends a piano recital, she realizes that she has only ever played on one with broken keys. Her father has multiple sclerosis and his body is slowly deteriorating, despite the fact that he insists he feels fine. And once, when Michelle and her family visit some family friends in a predominantly white neighborhood, they return to their car and find that someone has keyed a deep gash into it.

Still, Michelle doesn’t let these challenges get her down. She works hard in school, and despite a guidance counselor’s doubts, she gets into Princeton (following her brother). At the Third World Center at Princeton (a student center for minority students), she finds friends and mentors that make her feel more at home in a place she describes as “extremely white and very male.” One such friend is Suzanne Alele , who is very different from Michelle in that she prioritizes fun over more pragmatic choices.

Michelle graduates magma cum laude with a degree in sociology, but she doesn’t stop to truly consider what makes her passionate. Instead, she dives right into Harvard Law School, knowing that it will give her a degree of validation and certainty about what her future might look like. After law school, she moves back to Chicago to join a firm called Sidley & Austin. A year into working at Sidley, Michelle agrees to mentor an incoming summer associate. She is assigned Barack Obama , an African American man who is three years older than she is and has already gained a reputation as an exceptional law student (after finishing only his first year at Harvard). She and Barack quickly strike up a friendship, and she notes his intense optimism, his diligence, and also his humility. She is also intrigued by the fact that he seems more concerned with a broader “potential for mobility” than his own wealth. They begin to date just before Barack returns to Harvard.

Over the next two years, as Barack finishes up law school, Michelle starts to feel dissatisfied in her job, knowing she’s not passionate about it. Michelle also experiences two losses: the loss of her friend Suzanne to cancer, and the loss of her father. Her father dies of a heart attack just after finally agreeing to make a doctor’s appointment. Michelle is heartbroken; these losses prompt her to understand that life is precious and she cannot waste any more time in a job that she doesn’t enjoy.

Michelle leaves Sidley & Austin to begin what will become a series of jobs. First, she takes a job at city hall. Though she is skeptical of politics, she is excited by the opportunity to actually improve people’s lives. Meanwhile, Barack graduates from law school and moves back to Chicago. On the day he takes the bar exam, he proposes to Michelle, and she says yes. Michelle and Barack marry in the summer of 1992, then take a honeymoon in Northern California. When they return, Bill Clinton wins the presidency and Carol Mosely Braun (the first African American woman to hold a U.S. Senate seat) wins her race as well. Barack has missed a deadline to turn in a book manuscript, and so he decides to hole up in a cabin in Indonesia for six months to work on it while Michelle remains in Chicago.

Michelle and Barack go through a series of changes: she takes a job at a company called Public Allies, which recruits young people and places them in non-for-profit companies in the hopes that they will stay in that line of work. Barack wins a seat in the Illinois Senate; his mother Ann passes away. Michelle then moves on to a job at the University of Chicago, as an associate dean focusing on community relations. This job’s health benefits are particularly important to Michelle, as she and Barack are trying (unsuccessfully) to get pregnant. After months of failed attempts and a miscarriage, Michelle and Barack decide to try in vitro fertilization, and their daughter Malia is born via this method in 1998. Michelle has a difficult time adjusting to the schedule of being a mom and also having a part-time job. Barack, too, experiences some of the sacrifices of parenting: when they are on vacation in Hawaii, Malia falls ill and Barack is forced to miss a crime bill vote because they cannot fly home while she is sick. He loses a Congressional race as a result of missing the vote.

In 2001, Barack and Michelle have another girl, Sasha . Michelle debates whether to go back to work, but she interviews for a job with the University of Chicago Medical Center (again working on community outreach) and brings Sasha along, making her need for a competitive salary as well as a flexible schedule clear. She is hired. Still, even with the ability to afford childcare, Michelle grows frustrated with Barack’s absence—he is away every Monday through Thursday. The two go to couple’s counseling together and identify ways to make their schedules more compatible.

Michelle is happy at her new job, finding ways to improve how the hospital interacts with the local community and how community members seek treatment and get health care. Barack, meanwhile, decides to run for the U.S. Senate. He gets a few lucky breaks along the way: both the Democratic frontrunner and the Republican nominee are embroiled in scandals, and Barack is also selected by presidential nominee John Kerry as the keynote speaker for the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He gives a rousing seventeen-minute speech demonstrating how he is the embodiment of the American dream, calling for hope, progress, and unity among the American people. He becomes an instant sensation and wins his Senate race with 70 percent of the vote.

After two years in the Senate, Barack thinks about running for President. Michelle, who can already see her own identity slipping away in support of Barack’s, is hesitant, but she agrees, knowing that he could help millions of people. Along the campaign trail, Michelle and Barack face extra scrutiny because of their race. People often make racist comments about Barack and Michelle, and Michelle also faces a great deal of sexism when people speak about her “emasculating” Barack by being such a strong woman.

As Barack and Michelle campaign heavily in Iowa, Malia’s pediatrician tells Michelle that Malia’s body mass index is creeping up. Michelle hires a young man named Sam Kass to cook healthy meals for the family, and Michelle starts to become passionate about children’s health and nutrition. She and Sam discuss the possibility of planting a garden at the White House and starting a children’s health initiative if Barack wins.

After months of hard campaigning, Barack wins the Democratic nomination (beating Hillary Clinton ), and ultimately wins the presidency against Republican John McCain . This sets off a whirlwind of changes in the Obamas’ lives. They move to Washington and into the White House; they all receive dedicated Secret Service agents and a heavy security detail; they experience the luxury of a full-time staff catering to their needs.

Barack and Michelle waste no time: Barack is focused on rescuing a failing economy, while Michelle begins a series of initiatives in the White House. The first is planting a garden alongside Sam Kass, which helps spark her children’s health initiative, called Let’s Move! She gets large chain companies to promise to cut the salt, fat, and sugar in the meals they market to children, works with schools to provide healthier lunches, and gets networks like Disney and NBC to run PSAs during kids’ programs about the importance of physical activity.

Michelle knows that all of her decisions will face some kind of backlash: from women who believe she is giving up her education and career to become a domestic housewife; to those who believe she is too involved in policy; to those who simply focus on her fashion. Michelle knows, too, that as the first black First Lady, she is not perceived to have the “presumed grace” of other First Ladies.

Over the course of Barack’s two terms as President, both Michelle and Barack accomplish a lot. Barack is able to pass the Affordable Care Act, his signature domestic achievement. He starts to pull America out of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and American forces are able to kill Osama bin Laden. Barack rescues the economy. Michelle accomplishes a lot of her goals with Let’s Move! and also works on other initiatives like Joining Forces (which focuses on supporting military families), Reach Higher (which helps kids get to and stay in college) and Let Girls Learn (which supports girls’ education worldwide).

Still, there are many instances in which Barack and Michelle aren’t able to achieve all of their goals, and they feel the weight and responsibility of caring for a grieving nation. When a gunman kills twenty first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Connecticut, Barack knows there is no solace to be had, but resolves to fight for common sense gun control laws. Yet despite more and more instances of gun violence and school shootings, Congress does not budge.

As Barack’s presidency draws to a close, the next election kicks up. Michelle helps campaign for Hillary Clinton, particularly because she is disgusted by the racist and misogynistic comments that Donald Trump , the Republican nominee, makes. When Donald Trump eventually wins, Michelle is disheartened, worrying that so much of the progress that has been made in the last eight years might be undone. Still, as her family transitions out of the White House, she retains her optimism. No one person, she says, can reverse all progress.

Michelle concludes by affirming that she is “an ordinary person who found herself on an extraordinary journey.” She reflects on all of the ways that she and the country have changed over her lifetime. Neither she nor the country is perfect, but continuing to grow, and owning one’s own unique story, is what “becoming” ultimately means to her.

Story of a Woman: “Becoming” by Michelle Obama Report (Assessment)

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

The book Becoming is a memoir written by Michelle Obama in 2018. As a former US First Lady, the author decided to share her personal experience and talk about her roots and the time in the White House. This book is not only a political source of information with several complex terms and ideas, but a story of a woman and a mother in her attempts to find out the voice.

When people are asked about Obama’s policies and impact on American history, people usually choose one of the two sides: like or hate. In other words, it is hard to stay indifferent to the decisions and contributions made by the former President and his wife. Michelle Obama does not overestimate her role in society or compare her contributions with other people. Her goal is to introduce the story of her growth and the tasks she had or wanted to complete. In the “Becoming Me” chapter, Obama focuses on her personal qualities, intentions, and life before meeting Barack Obama, saying about “the sound of people trying” and “the soundtrack to our life” (4). The second chapter, “Becoming Us”, covers the events before the elections in 2008. “Becoming More” is the final chapter about the life of a presidential family and the obligation to meet social expectations and personal demands. Racial and gender issues are properly described in the book.

Becoming may become a source of inspiration and motivation for many young ladies of different races. This story helps to realize that even an ordinary girl who lives in a block, has friends, and respects parents can become a good leader and an example to be followed. This book is a political and personal story with several social, psychological, and economic issues being discovered in a simple and clear language.

Obama, Michelle. Becoming. Penguin Random House, 2018.

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Becoming Summary

1-Sentence-Summary: Becoming  will use Michelle Obama’s life story to motivate you to move forward with your dreams regardless of your circumstances, criticism, or what people think.

Favorite quote from the author:

Audio Summary

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Michelle Obama hasn’t always been as successful and well-known as she is today. Long before she was a lawyer, working mom, and First Lady, she was Michelle Robinson. Growing up in the Chicago south side, her loves included learning, jazz music, and Stevie Wonder long before she met Barack. 

In a quickly decaying neighborhood and school situation, Michelle’s mother helped her excel. Her hard work would later lead to her studying at prestigious universities and developing a desire to help people. 

These are just some of the life lessons you’ll learn from Michelle Obama in her book Becoming . This record-shattering memoir ( nearly 20 million copies sold ) will pull back the curtain on the family’s time in the White House. It will also remind you how authenticity, resilience, and hard work lead to success — even if it’s not the kind of success you might have planned for.

Here are the 3 most helpful lessons I’ve learned from the life of Michelle Obama:

• Regardless of the changes in your world, you can strive to be your best and learn.
• Ignore people who tell you what they think you can’t be, pushing yourself to excel will lead you to people who believe in your potential.
• Don’t be afraid to try new things, even if you live in a place as traditional as the White House.

Ready for some inspiration? Let’s go!

If you want to save this summary for later, download the free PDF and read it whenever you want.

Lesson 1: Be proactive about learning and getting a good education, regardless of how good or bad things are around you.

The South Side of Chicago saw a huge demographic change between 1950 and 1980. In the ’50s, it’s residents were 96% white. Just 30 years later, it was 96% black. Michelle Obama began life right in the middle of this, and at her school, there was a good mix of different people.

As she grew, an increasing number of her wealthier neighbors moved to the suburbs and took their money with them. Because of this the schools and businesses in the area began declining. It wasn’t long before nefarious real estate agents dubbed the area a ghetto . 

Thankfully, Michelle had a great mother who’s involvement in helping the community also helped her education . 

In second grade Michelle told her mom how awful school was. She explained that the teacher couldn’t control the chaos of the class, and her mom listened . It wasn’t long before Michelle tested into a third-grade class of high-performing kids. Looking back, this was a crucial step to her success in school.

Her drive helped her get into an equal opportunity school with great teachers and other top students like Michelle. She continued to work hard amid doubts that she could do it, especially when comparing herself to the other high-achieving kids. By concentrating on the work she learned quickly and excelled.

Lesson 2: Don’t let people’s opinions of you discourage you, try for greatness, and you will eventually find the people who believe in you.

Even though she was in the National Honors Society, class treasurer, and heading toward being in the top 10% of her class, Michelle still had opposition. 

She once had a meeting with a college counselor who said: “I’m not sure you’re Princeton material.” Michelle had hopes to go there because of an older brother that was already there. But this advisor, who should have been a professional, only told her to lower her sights. 

But she didn’t let this get her down , applied anyway, and got in. Sometimes you need to ignore the people who should be giving you the best advice to just go with your gut and shoot for the moon! And, as young Michelle quickly learned, doing so can lead you to people who truly believe in your ability to reach any dreams you have.

While Princeton was mostly white, Michelle got involved with an organization by the name of Third World Center (TWC). This group gave support to students of color. It was here that she met Czerny Brasuell, a mentor who would be a positive influence on Michelle throughout college. 

Brasuell was a working mom, which is something Michelle hoped to be someday. She also gave good reading suggestions, answered questions, and helped Michelle begin an afterschool program. Czerny was the perfect example and friend to Michelle throughout college, helping set the standard for her successful life.

Lesson 3: Don’t fear using your strengths and ideas to try to improve the world, no matter how prestigious a position you may be in.

Over the next few years, Michelle would go on to study at Harvard. After that, she began working for a law firm in Chicago. It was there that she met Barack Obama. Although she had some initial doubts about him, she quickly caught on and they were eventually married. 

Fast-forward a few years and the Obama’s and their two daughters are about to move into the White House as the First Family. They felt like they were in a whole new world with secret security and new protocols for even the simplest of things in life. 

Their typical date night of dinner and a show, for example, was no more due to all of the security restrictions in place. It was also hard for Michelle to get involved as the first lady acting like an elected official is frowned upon. But she did find ways to be herself amid this strange new universe she and her family were in. 

Her commitment to raising her daughters, for example, was one thing that Michelle wouldn’t let go of. She helped them see that the White House was their home and they could play and grab food from the pantry as they pleased.

Michelle also started a garden and worked on initiatives to help improve school lunches across the nation. The drive that helped her succeed in school and help other people shone through. She worked to improve the world in whatever way she could, even though the position her family was in made some aspects of life a little more challenging.

Becoming Review

No matter your political views, the life experiences Michelle Obama shares in Becoming are inspiring. Throughout the book, I noticed a theme of the power of hard work, which I think is a reminder we can all benefit from in a world full of seemingly magical success stories. If you’re looking for continued motivation to push forward and become a   better person , this book is for you.

Who would I recommend the Becoming summary to?

The 37-year-old mom who works, the 23-year-old who wants to go to law school but is afraid it might be too hard and just needs some inspiration, and anyone with a desire to change the world for the better.

Last Updated on April 24, 2023

Luke Rowley

With over 450 summaries that he contributed to Four Minute Books, first as a part-time writer, then as our full-time Managing Editor until late 2021, Luke is our second-most prolific writer. He's also a professional, licensed engineer, working in the solar industry. Next to his day job, he also runs Goal Engineering, a website dedicated to achieving your goals with a unique, 4-4-4 system. Luke is also a husband, father, 75 Hard finisher, and lover of the outdoors. He lives in Utah with his wife and 3 kids.

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Becoming Summary and Review | Book by Michelle Obama

Life gets busy. Has Becoming been gathering dust on your bookshelf? Instead, pick up the key ideas now.

We’re scratching the surface here. If you don’t already have the book, order it here or get the audiobook for free on Amazon to learn the juicy details.

Here are the key insights and the book review of Becoming:

About Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama is an American lawyer and author. Raised in Chicago, Michelle is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School. After working for multiple law firms and non-profits, Michelle’s most influential role was as the US’s First Lady from 2009 to 2017. During her time in the White House, she served as an advocate for poverty awareness, education, nutrition, physical activity, and healthy eating.

Introduction

Becoming is the memoir of Michelle Obama, former US First Lady. The book was published in 2018. It delves deep into her upbringing and its impact on her future life. The book explains how Michelle found her voice. Becoming gives its readers an insight into The White House and what it was like running a highly impactful public health campaign while being a mother. Covering a diversity of Michelle Obama’s experiences, Michelle described authoring this book as a “deeply personal experience.”

A highly influential book, Becoming sold more copies than any other book in the US in 2018. More remarkably, Becoming was only released 15 days before the end of 2018. It sold more books in that short space of time than any other 2018 book had in the entirety of that year. The book is broken down into 24 chapters but is ultimately separated into three sections. The first section is titled Becoming Me and focuses on Michelle’s early life. Becoming Us delves into her education, meeting Barack Obama, and the beginning of Barack’s political career. Finally, Becoming More concludes with thoughts on Barack’s presidency, Michelle’s Let’s Move campaign, and her role as “head mom in chief.” So, this book summary will also be broken down into these three sections. Each section will be filled with the most impactful experiences, thoughts, and conclusions formed by Michelle Obama. 

StoryShot #1: Michelle’s Early Years in Chicago

Michelle Robinson was born in 1968 in Chicago’s South Side. She was brought up in a brick bungalow belonging to her mother’s aunt. Michelle recalls the national riots in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. She barely understood what was going on in her neighborhood at the time. She was so young. 

Her family was hugely important to Michelle Obama when she was growing up in Chicago. Her mother taught her how to read from a very young age. She would accompany Michelle to the public library while her father worked as a city laborer. Her father made sure that she and her brother were exposed to art and jazz. This exposure to music encouraged Michelle to learn the piano at the age of four. 

Music ran in the family for Michelle, so she had always found it easy to play the piano. Her great aunt, Robbie, taught her. This period was one of the earliest examples of Michelle’s strong-minded nature. Her and Robbie often clashed during lessons. She even thought about becoming a musician one day, but eventually decided to pursue lawyerly opportunities. In the book, Michelle describes a memory of how accustomed she had grown to her great aunt’s piano. She had perfectly practiced a song she was set to perform at Roosevelt University. But her great aunt’s piano’s unique aspect is its middle C having a chip in it. When on stage, a young Michelle froze as she could not find middle C on this new piano. Her great aunt then came on stage and pointed it out. Michelle then performed her song as she had initially hoped. This is just one snapshot of how close Michelle was with her family.

StoryShot #2: Chicago’s Racial Transition

One of the remarkable features of Michelle’s upbringing is her area was 96% white in 1950 and then 96% black by 1981. She grew up in the middle of this transition. So, she was surrounded by a mixture of black and white families. But more and more families decided to move away to the suburbs. This movement meant less funding, and the area was deemed a “ghetto.” Michelle and her family still regarded this area as their home. 

StoryShot #3: Michelle’s Schooling

Michelle’s mother was a highly influential woman in the local community. She was also highly influential in Michelle’s education as she grew up. In the second grade, Michelle told her mother that she hated her class as it was full of chaotic children. The teachers could not get the class under control, and Michelle was missing opportunities to learn. Michelle’s mother also made sure the school tested her abilities. Michelle was moved up to a class with other high-performing children who wanted to learn. This decision is potentially the most crucial in how her life turned out. She had been put on the right track to excel in school.

Her top performances in school led her to attend Whitney M. Young High School in Chicago. A Magnet School, the teachers were progressive, and her fellow students were all high performing children. Michelle showed a significant commitment to attend this school. It took her two buses and 90 minutes to get to school each day. Some of her fellow students lived in high-rise apartments right by the school and would wear designer purses. Michelle explains in the book how everything appeared so effortless to them. Despite doubting whether she fitted in, she put her head down and received excellent grades. 

StoryShot #4: Princeton University and Finding a Great Mentor

During her time at school, Michelle excelled academically but also involved herself in the school’s societies. She was the elected class treasurer. Michelle was also in the National Honor Society, and she was on track to finish in the top 10% of her class. Despite this, her college counselor told her that she might not be “Princeton material.” Beforehand, she had been excited by the prospect of Princeton. Her brother, Craig, had attended Princeton, and she thought she might join him there. This counselor could have crushed her confidence. Instead, they irritated her and made her want to apply for Princeton even more. She did, and she got in.

Upon arriving at Princeton, Michelle recalls the experience of being one of the few non-white people. This was uncomfortable. For example, less than 9% of students in her freshman class were black. Despite this, she enjoyed her time at Princeton. She found a welcoming community and a fantastic mentor.

While at Princeton, Michelle’s mentor was one of the Third World Centre leaders. This center has since been renamed the Carl A. Fields Center for Equality and Cultural Understanding. Her name was Czerny Brasuell, an energetic New Yorker who was a strong black woman and a working mom. During her time at Princeton, Michelle became both Czerny’s assistant and her protégé. Czerny even encouraged Michelle to start running an after school program for the children of black faculty and staff members. Her future was influenced by Czerny, who inspired her to become a working mom in the future. 

After majoring in sociology, Michelle started to consider Harvard Law School. 

StoryShot #5: Getting Into Harvard Law School and Meeting Barack Obama

Michelle did decide to pursue Harvard Law School and subsequently took her LSAT test. She admits she never stopped and thought about what she would like to be doing. Michelle went straight from Princeton to Harvard Law School. She enjoyed her time at Harvard Law School, but it is the period after this that shaped her life. 

After graduating from Harvard in 1988, Michelle moved back to Chicago to work for a law firm called Sidley & Austin. Here she met a young law student named Barack Obama. He immediately exuded confidence and self-reliance. Unlike Michelle, he had taken a couple of years between Columbia and Harvard Law School to decide what he wanted to be. 

Michelle had heard of Barack before having even met him. He made a fantastic impression on everybody he talked to. Also, the professors at Harvard had been calling him the most gifted student they had ever seen. At the time, Michelle remained skeptical about this man, Barack. From her experience, professors seemed to “go bonkers” over any half-smart black man in a nice suit. 

Michelle finally met Barack. Her role at Sidley & Austin was to meet promising law students and encourage them to join the firm when they graduated. When meeting Barack, she realized she didn’t have much advice to give him. Having taken time out, Barack was more experienced and mature than students Michelle usually advised. She recalls people at the firm asking Barack for advice on matters. 

Her friends were hugely impressed when they met him. They encouraged her to overlook Barack’s smoking and go on a date with him. After their first kiss, any doubts about her future husband vanished. 

StoryShot #6: Michelle and Barack’s Marriage and the Development of Their Careers

Michelle and Barack’s relationship developed rapidly. Michelle’s brother was highly complimentary of Barack, especially as Barack was a decent basketball player. Michelle’s brother was a college basketball player and subsequently a basketball coach. Craig, Michelle’s brother, was a massive influence on her. His affirmation helped the relationship continue to flourish. 

Barack became the first black editor for the Harvard Law Review, which meant they had to live apart for a while. Barack was then able to move to Chicago to live with Michelle. Throughout their early years in Chicago, Barack was offered many jobs. But he remained thoughtful and considerate, instead choosing community workshops over high-paid law firms. During this time, Michelle was thinking about moving away from her work at Sidley & Austin towards something that was face-to-face. She didn’t want to work on behalf of corporations anymore; she wanted to help people. 

In 1991, Michelle met Valerie Jarrett, somebody who helped her transition her career. Valerie would ultimately become a lifelong friend of Michelle. Valerie had also been an unsatisfied lawyer and wanted to work with and help people. She had been working for the mayor’s office. Valerie used this opportunity to help Michelle get a job as assistant to the then-current mayor, Richard Daley, Jr. 

In October 1992, Michelle and Barack were married. The following year, Michelle worked on an initiative called Public Allies and used this experience to obtain a role working at City Hall. Then, a few years later, the job of Executive Director for a non-profit organization emerged. This organization connected promising young people with mentors who worked in the public sector. This was a fitting job for Michelle, as she felt civic-minded mentors had heavily influenced her. 

StoryShot #7: Michelle Wasn’t Initially Keen on Barack’s Political Pursuits

Michelle understood that Barack could win people over. She recalls him speaking in a church basement to a small audience of women concerned about their community. Barack encourages them to use political engagement through voting or reaching out to local representatives. By the end, the women were shouting, “Amen!” Michelle wasn’t the only one to notice his political potential, though. The Chicago Magazine noted Barack’s fantastic work on the Project VOTE! Campaign and suggested he should run for office. Not fussed by this at the time, Barack instead wanted to write a book entitled Dreams From My Father. This book was published in 1995 to decent reviews but insignificant sales. It was based on Barack’s unusual life story of being brought up between Indonesia and Hawaii. 

In 1995, Barack was teaching a class on racism and law at the University of Chicago. This year he was also approached about starting a career in politics. A new seat was about to open up in Michelle and Barack’s local area. Michelle was not excited by this prospect. She believed Barack could have more of an impact working for a non-profit than in the state Senate. Barack listened to these ideas but decided to run with it. Barack believed he could have a positive impact on politics. 

StoryShot #8: With Politics Came Personal Political Attacks

As Barack’s political career developed, personal attacks were inevitable. That said, Barack and Michelle differed in their ability to deal with these attacks. Barack had a remarkable ability just to let them go. Michelle struggled. She has a self-described need to be liked and could not merely shrug off hurtful comments in the same way that Barack could. 

One example of this is when Barack was running to be the candidate for a seat in the US Congress’ House of Representatives. Michelle and Barack now had a child, Malia. Malia was especially precious as the couple had struggled to conceive and had to use in vitro fertilization. The personal attacks were tied to an event when Malia got a severe ear infection while the family was on holiday. Simultaneously, the Illinois Senate announced an emergency vote on a prominent gun control bill. Barack had fought hard to pass this bill, and it was the subject of enormous debate. But Barack could not vote as he stuck by his family to help Michelle care for Malia. 

The attacks followed this decision, though. A local paper called anyone who had missed this vote “gutless sheep.” The opposition democrat accused Obama of “using his child as an excuse not to go to work.” Barack lost the primary but continued to serve in the state senate. Subsequently, their second child, another girl, Sasha, was born. 

StoryShot #9: Michelle Was Also Skeptical About Barack’s Senate and Presidential Bids, but Then Things Changed

Michelle was already skeptical about Barack’s political career, which meant he missed lots of family time. She was even more skeptical about the prospect of Barack running for the US Senate. Michelle only allowed him to run because she secretly doubted he was going to win it. This doubt wasn’t because she doubted his ability, but because he had recently lost a congressional primary. Michelle made Barack promise that if he lost his race for the US Senate, he must give up on politics. He should find another way to impact the world positively. 

Luckily for Barack, the Republican opponent dropped out of the race. In the same year, 2004, the Democratic presidential candidate asked Barack to deliver a keynote speech. His speech was highly impactful. Beforehand, not many people had heard of him. Afterward, an NBC commentator, among others, were saying they had “just seen the first black President.”

In the next election, Barack did run for President. This era marked a change in heart for Michelle. Her previous skepticism was changed when she saw 15,000 people show up to the announcement event on a bitterly cold day in Illinois. She knew she had to show up for these people and support her husband, who, to them, was a beacon of hope. 

StoryShot #10: White House Security

Michelle explains how Barack becoming president made simple tasks more complicated. This included their security. Barack Obama received a Secret Service security detail earlier than any other candidate in history. There had been serious threats made against him and the family. 

As always, security levels were high in the White House. Barack and Michelle were willing to accept insufficient privacy and autonomy in their lives for the good they were doing. Despite this, they did not want the same for their children. So, they tried to make things as normal as possible for the girls. They found them a lovely school and ensured that Malia and Sasha knew that it was their home despite the White House’s monumental size. Michelle frequently told them it was okay for them to run around and play in the hallways. It was also okay for them to rummage in the pantry for snacks.

StoryShot #11: Raising Children in The White House

Michelle also wanted Sasha and Malia to develop healthy friendships. She prioritized a reliable system being set up to allow friends to visit The White House. In The White House, all visitors had to have their Social Security numbers run by the authorities before entering. This meant friends could come over, but they couldn’t do anything spontaneously. For example, they couldn’t just pop to the local ice cream shop. Sasha and Malia took to life in the White House, though. Michelle recalled how relieved she was to see the two of them borrowing a tray from the kitchen. They used this tray to slide down a snow-covered slope on the South Lawn. This is the normality she was hoping for her children. 

Not to mention, family meals were now a staple of life as there was no longer a commute for Barack.

StoryShot #12: Michelle Used This Time to Continue to Make a Difference

As she had done throughout her life, Michelle utilized her circumstances to try to make a difference. Hillary Clinton had given her advice about the potential pitfalls of being too involved in the administration’s agenda. Hillary had her legal background. She found that using this experience to set policies didn’t go well when these issues aligned with the administration. 

So, Michelle aimed to seek out her own endeavors. Firstly, she started a garden in the White House. This made the White House more like home. But the most important part of this garden was the healthy fruits and vegetables. Healthy food was at the heart of her most significant accomplishment while First Lady. This was her Let’s Move! Initiative. The initiative was created to tackle childhood obesity, which had tripled over the 30 years prior. 

The Let’s Move! campaign involved four steps:

• Parents were given information on healthy dietary options.
• The food at school was made healthier.
• Healthy foods were brought to the many rural and urban areas that lacked fresh fruit and produce.
• The initiative aimed to get kids more active, burning calories daily.

The campaign was successful from the start. After ten weeks, 90 pounds of produce had been harvested at the White House. This produce was used in daily meals at the White House. School lunches cut down on their use of salt and sugar. At the same time, the American Beverage Association committed to creating more transparent ingredient labels. Finally, major television stations agreed to air public service announcements on the initiative during children’s programming. Michelle had made such a huge difference in such a short space of time. 

StoryShot #13: A Traumatic Attack on The White House

Michelle explains in her book how Barack’s second term was much easier. The family had better adjusted to the protocols, and the White House seemed more like home. This did not mean the security threats had gone, though. Michelle recalls the winter of 2011 when a gunman opened fire on the White House with a semiautomatic rifle. This horrific event offered a reminder of the precariousness of being in the White House and the safety precautions made. In the months before repairs could be made, there was a sizable dent in the room’s bullet-proof window where Michelle often sat to read. It served as a reminder of why all the protocols and security procedures existed.

StoryShot #14: Michelle Is Proud of Her Achievements

Michelle concludes the book by stating that she is proud of what she could accomplish as First Lady. Throughout her time in the White House, she continued to ask herself whether she was good enough. She now believed she was. The Let’s Move! program brought healthier school lunches to 45 million kids. Her Joining Forces initiative also helped 1.5 million veterans and their spouses get jobs. Meanwhile, her Let Girls Learn initiative raised billions of dollars to help girls worldwide gain access to schools. This education encouraged female empowerment.

The proudest moments of her and her husband’s time in office, though, are bringing up her two daughters. Malia and Sasha have both since graduated from school. Barack and Michelle decided to stay living in Washington after leaving Office. They did so to allow their daughters to graduate with the friends they had made over the past eight years. 

Final StoryShots Review and Analysis

Becoming is an exploration into the life of Michelle Obama. It starts with her childhood and ends with her legacy as First Lady. This book offers a unique insight into how Michelle Obama met Barack, but also an insight into the joy and hardship associated with being a presidential family.

We rate this book 4.1/5.

How would you rate it?

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Book Summary Becoming , by Michelle Obama

Michelle Obama's memoir Becoming delivers candid reflections on the life of the first African-American first lady. Offering a window into her personal evolution, Michelle details how ambition, hard work, and embracing her authentic story helped her journey from her family’s Chicago working-class neighborhood to a 47th-floor law office, then to the White House and beyond.

Becoming provides insights into Michelle’s self-determination: She pushed herself to excel in Ivy League classrooms and achieve a prestigious career by age 26, then mustered the courage to swerve off that path in search of greater fulfillment. It details her relationship with Barack—a love story of two opposites—and their challenging quest to navigate family and political life. Through it all, we witness a woman who perpetually strives to become a better version of herself.

1-Page Summary 1-Page Book Summary of Becoming

From the time she was a small child, Michelle Obama's parents taught her the importance of speaking up and telling her own story in her authentic voice—reconciling her past, present, and future and feeling proud of it all. As first lady of the United States, Michelle passed on this advice to thousands of young people, and she hopes that by sharing her own life’s narrative, she can inspire others.

As her memoir begins, Michelle has recently left the White House after eight years as first lady from January 2009 to January 2017. Along with her husband, former President Barack Obama, and their two daughters, Malia and Sasha, she has moved into a suburban home not far from the White House. For the first time in many years, Michelle finds herself alone with her thoughts in a quiet house.

Each member of the Obama family is transitioning into new chapters of their lives. Barack is exploring career opportunities for his post-Presidential years. The Obama children are entering adulthood—Malia, the older daughter, is taking a gap year before starting college at Harvard University, and Sasha will finish high school in another two years. Michelle is free from the constraints of her highly public life as first lady. Simultaneously, her duties and responsibilities as a mother have diminished.

Michelle describes the simple pleasures she can now enjoy, which she didn't have while living in the White House: She can go outside and play in the yard with her dogs without the Secret Service asking where she is going. She can open her bedroom windows and let in fresh air whenever she pleases. She can make her own cheese toast without the kitchen staff rushing in to help.

Even though a cadre of Secret Service agents is holed up in the Obamas' garage command post—and agents will accompany the family for the rest of their lives—Michelle cherishes her newfound freedom and quiet time. This is her opportunity to reflect and write her life story.

Eight themes weave through Michelle’s memoir:

1. Becoming Is an Ongoing Challenge

Michelle is a woman who is perpetually striving to become a better version of herself. Through the process of “becoming,” she learns to adapt to her changing circumstances and not get stuck holding fast to the same identity or set of beliefs. She learns to grow and change in pursuit of the person she’d like to become.

Michelle discovers that personal growth has no finish line; there’s no moment in time when she’s done evolving. “Becoming” is an ongoing process of self-creation. It requires understanding there’s always more work to be done.

Michelle’s early years didn’t allow for this kind of flexibility. As a child, she focused on doing the “right” thing to please her teachers and family. She wanted only to make a good impression and earn others’ praise and admiration: She strived for straight A’s and perfect attendance in school. She told adults she wanted to be a pediatrician when she grew up because they seemed pleased by that answer. She didn’t think about what her passions were or what she wanted from her life.

Michelle followed a precise and predetermined path of “checking off boxes” —earning top honors in elementary and high school, getting admitted to top-notch universities, climbing the corporate ladder at a high-profile law firm. She never stopped to consider whether any of it made her happy. When her free-spirited college friend died from cancer at age 26, Michelle had a wake-up call. She realized she didn’t want the life she had worked so hard to achieve. She had to muster the courage to veer off the path she'd followed for years and find her path into a more meaningful future.

Despite her mother’s objections, Michelle quit her job and took a much lower paying position in the Chicago mayor’s office. She calls this “finding the courage to swerve.” She was moving closer to living her own true story, not simply living up to others’ expectations.

Michelle learned to swerve again after Barack became an important figure in her life. His passion for working to build a better world encouraged her to seek out more fulfilling work in the nonprofit sector. She wound up holding a series of civic-minded positions that were far more enriching than her law career.

But what she loved most about Barack—his idealism and desire to help people and change the world—also challenged her vision of how her life should be. Michelle wanted a private family life like the one she grew up in—days filled with simple routines and the whole family sitting down to the dinner table every night. She knew that life with Barack meant a life in the political arena, which meant chaotic schedules, the glare of the media spotlight, and never-ending public scrutiny.

Despite Michelle’s misgivings about political life, she loved Barack, so she gave up her predetermined ideas about what her life should look like. She evolved as a partner to Barack and as a person—she campaigned for him when he ran for Senate and for two terms as President. Ultimately she became one of the most popular first ladies in American history.

Once her time in the White House ended, Michelle had to begin the process of “becoming” all over again. Leaving behind her role in politics and with two daughters nearing adulthood, it was up to Michelle to recreate herself and adapt to her new reality.

2. Striving, Hard Work, and Self-Determination

Through her parents' encouragement and her own hard work, Michelle rose above her circumstances . She grew up in South Shore, a working-class Chicago neighborhood. She, her brother, and parents shared a one-bedroom apartment that the family rented from her mother’s aunt. Her father worked for the city water department and suffered from multiple sclerosis.

Michelle studied diligently in public school and later graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Law School. She held high-powered jobs as a corporate lawyer,...

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Becoming Summary Preface: Michelle Decides to Tell Her Story (2017)

From the time she was a small child, Michelle Obama's parents taught her the importance of speaking up and telling her own story in her authentic voice— reconciling her past, present, and future and feeling proud of it all. As first lady of the United States, Michelle passed on this advice to thousands of young people, and she hopes that by sharing her own life’s narrative, she can inspire others.

Each member of the Obama family is transitioning into a new stage of their lives. Barack is exploring career opportunities for his post-Presidential years. The Obama children are entering adulthood—Malia, the older daughter, is taking a gap year before starting college at Harvard University, and Sasha will finish high school in another two years. **Michelle is free from the constraints of...

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Becoming Summary Chapters 1-2: Childhood and Family Life (1964-1976)

These chapters focus on Michelle's youth in urban Chicago, the people who made up her loving, close-knit family, and her introduction to her own natural ambition. This is young Michelle’s first stage of “becoming,” in which she learns that she can dictate much about her own future through hard work and striving.

Early Years

Michelle LaVaughn Robinson was born in January 1964. She grew up in Chicago in one of the poorer blocks of a racially mixed, working-class neighborhood called South Shore. Michelle's parents rented a small apartment on the second floor of a house owned by Michelle's great-aunt Robbie. Her parents slept in the single bedroom; Michelle and her older brother Craig shared the living room.

Michelle and Craig were surrounded by extended family members throughout their early years. Great-aunt Robbie and her husband lived on the first floor, and Michelle's grandparents and cousins lived only a few blocks away.

Michelle's Childhood Dreams

Young Michelle's aspirations were uncomplicated. She wanted a dog. She wanted her family to live in a house with two floors—upstairs and downstairs—and have a four-door station wagon parked in the driveway. In...

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Becoming Summary Chapters 3-5: Coming of Age (1970s)

These chapters focus on Michelle and her brother Craig as they begin to grow into adulthood, learn about life's risks and responsibilities, and come to grips with the harsh reality of racial discrimination. In these years, Michelle begins to learn that there is more than one version of Black identity—that being Black isn’t tied to a single mode of speech, thought, or action—and that it’s up to her to create who she wants to be.

Learning to Be Prepared

When Michelle was in fifth grade, she and her brother learned a hard lesson about life’s uncertainty. One of her classmates died in a house fire, a too-common tragedy in South Shore's aging buildings. Because most households didn't have smoke detectors, entire families sometimes perished.

Michelle and Craig attended the boy's funeral, and Craig, who was now a teenager, was deeply upset. He had always been a protective big brother to Michelle, but now life's risks had become more apparent. He decided his family must have an emergency plan in case of a house fire. He was especially concerned about his father, Fraser, who had little or no agility because of his multiple sclerosis.

Craig and Michelle began conducting fire...

Shortform Exercise: Who Were Your Doubters?

When Michelle told her high school counselor she'd like to apply to Princeton, the counselor told her she "wasn't Princeton material." But Michelle ignored her advice and got into Princeton anyway.

Think of a time when you voiced your ambitions, and someone responded by doubting you. Who was it, and what did they say?

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Shortform Exercise: How Did Your Hometown Shape You?

Michelle's South Shore neighborhood shaped her in a profound way. As she says, where we come from has a strong effect on the person we become—it's a major contributor to our character.

Describe the neighborhood or region you grew up in. List two advantages and two disadvantages of growing up there.

Becoming Summary Chapters 6-7: Princeton Years (1981-1985)

These chapters focus on Michelle's undergraduate years at Princeton University, her experience as a Black woman in classrooms full of white men, and her first job working with children. These years are critical to Michelle’s “becoming”: As her skills and capabilities develop, she learns to believe in herself. She sees that even in the most daunting situations in college or in her work-study job, she can rise to meet the challenge.

A New Start at Princeton

In 1981, 17-year-old Michelle went off to Princeton, leaving behind everything she loved in Chicago, including her boyfriend of the last year. Although she knew he was a great guy and she loved him, she also knew he didn't fit into her new life.

Being in the Minority

At Princeton, Michelle experienced being in the minority for the first time. Her first few weeks at Princeton were an orientation period just for minority students, so she didn't immediately notice much disparity between herself and her peers. Princeton admitted some of the students to fill affirmative action quotas; others were student-athletes in the top tier of their sports. Some incoming freshmen were much like her—exceptional...

Becoming Summary Chapters 8-9: Law Career and Meeting Barack (1989-1990)

In these chapters, Michelle jumps forward in her narrative, skipping past her years at Harvard Law School to her job at a high-end Chicago law firm and the summer she meets Barack. Michelle begins to evolve from someone who is solely career- and achievement-focused to someone who wants to be wife and mother, and she begins to question whether her law career was the right choice.

Return to Chicago

At 25 years old, holding degrees from Harvard and Princeton, Michelle moved back to her hometown of Chicago. Her new law office was on the 47th floor of a building she had passed by many times on her way to high school. She became an upwardly mobile lawyer who worked 70 hours per week, owned a closet full of Armani suits, had a wine subscription service, and drove a Saab.

Michelle moved back into her old South Shore home, living in the upstairs apartment she was raised in. Her parents lived downstairs in the space where great-aunt Robbie, the piano teacher, lived before she died. (Robbie willed them the house.)

Michelle enjoyed visiting with her parents every day before and after work. Her brother Craig, now an investment banker, had also returned to live in Chicago with...

Becoming Summary Chapters 10-12: Fraser’s Death and the Obamas’ Marriage (1990-1993)

These chapters focus on the death of Michelle's father, Michelle and Barack's engagement and marriage, and Michelle’s decision to leave her law career to work at Chicago City Hall. Although her career transition posed a challenge, Michelle is transforming into someone who makes choices for herself instead of trying to impress or please other people.

Rethinking Her Future

In the summer of 1990, Barack returned to Chicago as a summer associate at a different law firm and moved into Michelle's apartment in her parents' house. This gave Marian, Fraser, and Barack a chance to get to know each other. But he soon returned to Cambridge to attend to his duties as president of the Harvard Law Review. Barack was the first African-American to hold this position.

Michelle realized that Barack's future looked bright and bold while hers seemed lackluster. She felt serious doubts about her choice of career. Practicing corporate law held little meaning for her. She didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life, and she felt somewhat intimidated by Barack's confidence that he was ready to make a difference in the world. She started writing in a journal to sort through her...

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Shortform Exercise: Knowing When to Swerve

Michelle Obama writes about being a “box checker” as a child, someone who strives for perfect attendance and straight A’s. She followed a straight-line path to success, checking off one box after another until she reached her academic and career goals. But later in life, she learned she had to “swerve” to adjust to life’s circumstances. (For example, she veered away from corporate law to a more meaningful but lesser paying job.)

In general, do you see yourself as someone who checks boxes or someone who swerves? (To think of it another way: Do you see yourself as a meticulous planner or as someone who is more spontaneous in your decision-making?) What makes you say this?

Becoming Summary Chapters 13-14: Career Changes and Motherhood (1993-2003)

These chapters focus on Michelle's career moves—first to the nonprofit Public Allies and then to the University of Chicago—as well as her challenges in getting pregnant and the eventual birth of the Obamas' two daughters. Becoming a mother fulfills a lifelong goal for Michelle—and plays an important role in her evolution as a person.

Executive Director at Public Allies

After Michelle left her job at Chicago City Hall, she was hired as the executive director for the Chicago chapter of Public Allies, an organization that sought to inspire a new generation of community leaders. Much like Teach for America or AmeriCorps, Public Allies trained talented young people through 10-month apprenticeships in civic-minded jobs and nonprofit organizations.

As the 29-year-old executive director, Michelle was thrilled to have the chance to run her own nonprofit. She relished being in charge of setting up an office, hiring staff, seeking out donors, and finding suitable places for young people to work. Most of all, she enjoyed selecting the "allies" themselves, the young people who would participate. She searched out candidates at community colleges and urban high schools....

Becoming Summary Chapter 15: Michelle's Early Forties (2004-2006)

This chapter focuses on Michelle's dual roles as career woman and mother, Barack's tenure as a U.S. Senator, and how Hurricane Katrina affects his decision to run for U.S. President. At this stage in Michelle’s “becoming,” she feels satisfied with her career choice and overjoyed to be a wife and mother. But she’s about to face new challenges as Barack moves deeper into the political arena.

At 40 years old, Michelle's life settled into a fairly happy routine. She was careful not to allow her job at the hospital to overtake her family life. She felt like she was "pulling it off"— balancing a challenging and satisfying job with the joys of motherhood. Unlike in her younger years, she no longer threw herself completely into her work. She was protective of her time to make sure she provided a stable life for her girls. She discovered that living this way made her happy.

Barack Runs for Senate

Believing that he could make big changes in Washington, D.C., Barack toyed with the idea of running for U.S. Senate. Michelle tried to discourage him.

If Barack ran, his campaign would be especially difficult because he was only an Illinois state legislator. He was unknown...

Shortform Exercise: Supporting Your Partner When You Don't Agree

Michelle decided to support Barack's run for the Presidency despite her deep misgivings about politics and her longing for a private family life.

How do you resolve career conflicts—or other major conflicts of interest—in your relationship?

Becoming Summary Chapters 16-18: Campaign for the Presidency (2007-2008)

These chapters focus on Barack's successful run for U.S. President, Michelle's role in campaigning, and the challenges of living in the media spotlight. Michelle must confront her aversion to public life and distaste for politics and find a way to support her partner without losing her own precious sense of self.

Barack Announces His Candidacy

Michelle truly believed Barack had the intelligence, temperament, discipline, and empathy to be a great president. She believed in his ideals and his ability to bring them to life. But she also knew enough about America to think the country might not yet be ready for a Black president. She had an unshakeable feeling that no matter how hard he campaigned, he wasn't going to win.

On February 10, 2007, Barack prepared to stand at an outdoor podium in a freezing Illinois storm to announce his candidacy. Michelle worried that the awful weather would mean a small crowd, and Barack’s kickoff event might be a dismal failure. She worried that her daughters would trip over their feet or look bored on stage. She worried whether she or they were dressed properly. She was painfully aware of the image she was supposed to project: **"I knew...

Becoming Summary Chapters 19-20: Inauguration and First Year in the White House

These chapters focus on Michelle's role as first lady, her family's adjustment to life in the White House, her plan to plant a White House garden, and her first visit with Queen Elizabeth. Michelle initially feels daunted by the intensely public role she plays in American life, but she soon adapts to her new reality and manages to put her own unique spin on being first lady.

Preparing to Be the First Black First Lady

In the 76 days between the election and the inauguration, Michelle started to plan what she would do as first lady. After the hard knocks Michelle had to withstand during Barack's presidential campaign, she had a fair idea of the scrutiny that awaited. As the first Black woman in American history to serve as first lady, she would be "measured by a different yardstick."

The job of a first lady does not come with a job description or even with official responsibilities. And yet, the position wields tremendous power, and Michelle wanted to use that power to achieve positive changes. Since she was free to select her own agenda, **she planned to oversee several initiatives that would offer better support for military families and teach America's kids about...

Becoming Summary Chapters 21-22: Balancing Public and Private Life (2009-2013)

These chapters focus on how the Obamas learn to navigate their public and private lives, Michelle's fears about her family's safety, and her successful initiatives for children's health and military families. Michelle is now firmly entrenched in her role as first lady—and every day makes her more fully aware of the advantages and disadvantages of that role.

Barack had been in office for four months when Malia and Sasha received the present they'd been promised throughout his campaign. Senator Ted Kennedy gave them Bo, a seven-month-old Portuguese water dog. The entire family loved Bo, and he was permitted to wander through most of the White House rooms.

Date Night for the Obamas

About the same time as the puppy joined the family, Barack and Michelle went on a date in New York City to have dinner and see a Broadway show. They had given up the customary date night they used to enjoy in Chicago, and the pair wanted to have an evening alone. Of course, the Secret Service had to plan every move, block off streets, and thoroughly check out every patron who entered the restaurant. Since the couple had to travel in the presidential motorcade, streets were blocked off and...

Shortform Exercise: The Importance of Mentors

Michelle described a number of women who served as mentors for her at different times in her life—from her boss at her work-study job at Princeton to her colleagues at Chicago City Hall to past first ladies in the White House. Each mentor helped her to see what kind of person she could become.

Name three of the most important mentors in your life. Next to each name, write what they've helped you to achieve.

Shortform Exercise: The Importance of Friendship

When Michelle moved to Washington, D.C., she had to work harder to maintain her relationships with her Chicago girlfriends. But because these friends had always been her "circle of strength," she made an extra effort to keep them close (for example, planning getaways at Camp David with them).

List three people who are part of your circle of strength. Next to each name, write how that person supports you.

Becoming Summary Chapter 23: Second Term in the White House (2011-2016)

These chapters focus on Barack's second term in the White House, Michelle's higher education and girls' schooling initiatives, and the Obamas' campaign against gun violence. Now that Michelle has had four years of experience as first lady, she’s able to settle into her role and achieve more of the public-service goals that matter to her.

Barack's popularity soared briefly after bin Laden was killed, but by late summer 2011, Barack was taking a beating by a group of Republican senators who voted down almost all of his bills. The county was still in a dismal economic state from the 2008 financial meltdown. Americans were worried about a possible recession. Many politicians and voters blamed Barack for the mess. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that the Republican Party’s most important task was to make sure Barack was “a one-term president.” It seemed that despite the state of the country, the Republicans had only one goal, and that was to see Barack fail.

Meeting Nelson Mandela in South Africa

That same summer, Michelle, Malia, and Sasha were scheduled to travel to South Africa for a goodwill visit. Michelle had speeches to make and meetings to attend. She...

Becoming Summary Chapter 24 & Epilogue: The Obama Era Ends (2017)

The final pages focus on Sasha and Malia's life in the White House, the last year of the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton's and Donald Trump's campaigns for the presidency, and the 2017 inauguration of Donald Trump. After the inauguration, Michelle and her family depart the White House, and her next stage of “becoming” begins. After eight years of an extremely unusual life, she must now adjust to the world beyond the White House and the new reality that her daughters are nearly grown.

Sasha and Malia Grow Up

In the Obamas’ eighth year at the White House, Malia graduated from high school and traveled to Europe. At Malia's graduation ceremony, Michelle looked over at Barack, who had tears in his eyes as Malia walked across the stage, and felt sorry for him. Since Barack was ending his second term as President, he was nearly finished with his service to the country and would soon have more time to spend with his daughters. But now Malia was an independent young woman who was ready to leave the nest. Both parents felt sad that their oldest was preparing to leave home.

Teenagers in the Spotlight

Michelle feels proud of Sasha and Malia for how well they...

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• Nov 13, 2018

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Book Summary

Winner of the 2019 BookBrowse Nonfiction Award An intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States.

In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America - the first African-American to serve in that role - she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare. In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her - from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world's most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it - in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations - and whose story inspires us to do the same.

Read a text excerpt of the preface Listen to an audio excerpt of the preface, read by Mrs Obama Both links open in a new window.

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

• Mrs. Obama begins her book with a story about making cheese toast on a quiet night at home, a few months after leaving the White House. Why do you think she chose this story to begin her memoir?
• Mrs. Robinson is the opposite of a helicopter parent. She was tough and had very high expectations for her children, and she also expected them to figure some things out on their own and learn from their missteps and the process of making choices. She gave her children agency at a very young age. How did that shape Mrs. Obama? ...

Please be aware that this discussion guide may contain spoilers!

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I could not have loved this book more than I did. It was presented in such a way that when I was finished, I felt I had full knowledge of what made Michelle tick (Carol R). It was like meeting a new friend and over time getting to know her through revelations of the stages of her life. It was easy and still thought-provoking (katherinep). I love Michelle Obama and I loved her book. She is a class act and it came through in her writing (djn). I found her memoir astounding. She writes with such honesty, passion, and love (barbarae). This is a fabulous, informative and uplifting book. I always had a good impression of Michelle Obama and this book enhanced it. I felt that Michelle really shared herself with her readers and offered an intimate look at her life (Lois I)... continued

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Beyond the Book

Memoirs by first ladies.

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by Michelle Obama

Becoming analysis.

These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own.

Written by people who wish to remain anonymous

Becoming is a book about overcoming obstacles and believing in yourself in a world where everything is against you. Obama's book serves as an inspiration to both the young and the elderly community, in showing them the power they have to change the world, as long as they reach out and take a hold of it. Becoming is not only a memoir of Obama's own life, but it is a story of a black woman becoming everything she could ever hope for and more.

Racism and how American history has had (-and still has) an impact on the black people and the way they live it. Females have the same problem, and Michelle happens to be both: a black woman. She was told by her teachers that she wouldn't be able to go to the school she hoped attending, because of her race and where she came from. Obama rose above the crowd, and still did it, and she believes that everyone else can as well.

At the same time, Obama had to juggle being a mother, a wife, and the First Lady. This was not an easy task, as she wished being the best at all, but they sometimes overlapped. This showed that life isn't easy, and no one can be perfect. All Obama could do was try her best, and she had to be happy with the results. All in all, Obama's book serves as an inspiration for the people reading and hoping to become something as great as Obama herself.

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Becoming Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Becoming is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Study Guide for Becoming

Becoming study guide contains a biography of Michelle Obama, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

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Michelle Obama makes decency great again in her memoir Becoming : EW review

Allow Michelle Obama to clear the air. She doesn't intend to ever run for office. She believes our current president is a "misogynist" whose racist rhetoric put her "family's safety at risk." She fears the impact of the president's recklessness on the country she loves. "I've lain awake at night, fuming over what's come to pass," Obama writes in her memoir, Becoming . "It's been distressing to see how the behavior and the political agenda of the current president have caused many Americans to doubt themselves and to doubt and fear one another."

Becoming arrives like a glass bottle of decency, preserved from a nationwide garbage fire. This is a straightforward, at times rather dry autobiography from a major public figure that stands in remarkably sharp contrast to the state of our discourse — starting with the man in the White House. Yet that contrast isn't derived from Obama's scathing commentary on Donald Trump, which is both brief and somewhat expected, but rather, from the rest — as in, the vast majority — of Becoming , which describes one woman's growth from the South Side of Chicago to First Lady of the United States, through tales of empowerment and overcoming adversity.

What sets Becoming apart is context: Michelle Obama is a black woman, unlike her predecessors, and her book is publishing at a time of unprecedented social division. Thus this latest entrant in the canon of First Lady memoirs — a subgenre themed largely by appeals to unity — can hardly be called apolitical. Every sentence Obama writes makes a statement. This turns out to be especially true because of how little the author deviates from the formula.

The book's first third, "Becoming Me," is dedicated to Obama's upbringing in '60s Chicago and her educational development. It can drag, progressing like so many memoirs of its type. But Obama also constructs episodes from her childhood which vividly, subtly capture the experience of growing up black in America: learning of racism's legacy as she hears her grandfather's stories, being challenged by a peer for "talking like a white girl," occupying spaces like piano recitals and, later, Princeton University, where her blackness — "that everyday drain of being in a deep minority" — clarifies itself.

Obama grew up working-class. Her parents — a stay-at-home mom, and a father whose body she watched decline from multiple-sclerosis until his death at 55 — fully encouraged her ambitions and intellectual curiosity. She recounts memories with an eye toward her political-adjacent future. In remembering how she'd watch her father talk to his neighbors with keen interest and warmth, Obama writes intently to the image of observing a good-hearted politician making the rounds, listening to his constituents' troubles, like he has nowhere else to be. (Remind you of anyone?) She also depicts moments of personal transformation, like when she, still young, physically attacked a moody girl named DeeDee to gain her respect.

But these are the scenes you'd get in the biopic version: meaty, telegraphed, devoid of subtext. The mechanics can outweigh the story here. Obama's strength in Becoming lies in hindsight, her ability to take a step back from a specific anecdote, and not only contextualize but ruminate on it, really consider its power. In these asides, that introspection Obama claims to have had as a kid comes into thrilling evidence — as prose. On one difficult teen experience, she writes, "I look back on the discomfort of that moment and recognize the more universal challenge of squaring who you are with where you come from and where you want to go." One of Becoming 's best passages comes even earlier, in the preface, as Obama details the day of Trump's inauguration: "A hand goes on a Bible; an oath gets repeated. One president's furniture gets carried out while another's comes in. Closets are emptied and refilled in the span of a few hours. Just like that, there are new heads on new pillows — new temperaments, new dreams. And when it ends, when you walk out the door that last time from the world's most famous address, you're left in many ways to find yourself again."

I focus particularly on the book's opening section because it's most reflective of how Obama frames Becoming : as a story of where she came from, where she went, and how she carried herself along the way. The author invests in a sort of quintessentially American narrative, but subverts it by not shying away from the realities of race and gender, and finding opportunities for complex, candid reflection.

The bulk of these opportunities, surely, arrive in "Becoming Us" — the book's second and best section, devoted to her romance with Barack Obama. Again, from a distance, it looks roughly like what we've seen from many a First Lady's public account: the bumps in the road, the difficulty of the spotlight, the durability of their love. But Obama seems determined in Becoming to fully live in the pain, the disappointment, the regret, and the loss she's felt at various times during their relationship. She interrogates it, picks at it, and reveals to readers what's underneath.

Just listen to the words she uses. Obama felt "resentment" toward her husband and his commitment to politics after she suffered a miscarriage and, on a doctor's recommendation, proceeded with IVF treatments to start a family. "Or maybe I was just feeling the acute burden of being female," she continues. "Either way, he was gone and I was here, carrying the responsibility." (Earlier, she draws a hauntingly clear picture: "Now here I was in the bathroom of our apartment, trying, in the name of all that want, to screw up the courage to plunge a syringe into my thigh.") Then there's when she fell for Barack; she describes the feeling as "a toppling blast of lust, gratitude, fulfillment, wonder." Obama embraces passionate language periodically, lending Becoming bursts of authenticity.

Overall, Obama plays to the space she and her husband have occupied in the culture — an idyllic, supportive marital unit — brilliantly. She affirms the public perception, that their relationship is happy, healthy, and loving. But she deconstructs what it took — takes — to get there: couples counseling, flickers of doubt, confusion, sacrifice, even loneliness. In laying that aspect of her life most bare — more than her childhood, more than her own legal career and ambitions — Obama persuasively communicates the primacy of her marriage in her life.

Becoming takes a peculiar turn in its final act, as Obama discusses her time in the White House. She ably conveys the confinement she felt — literalized, perhaps, in the saga that was trying to just sit out on the Truman Balcony — and the toll it took on her family. ("This isn't how families work or how ice cream runs work," she recalls saying after Secret Service intervened in Malia trying to get ice cream with her friends.) But this extends to her writing. It's choppy and guarded and, strangely, a bit defensive as she espouses the value of the causes she took up as First Lady. One senses there are layers yet to be peeled here — that the presidency remains relatively raw for Becoming 's author.

But then Becoming is a rather peculiar read throughout. We're at the end of 2018, a year when the paradigm for Washington memoirs has shifted so dramatically — when a fired FBI Director , a reality TV star , and an award-winning journalist could each top the New York Times best-seller list for the exact same reason: digging up Trump dirt. No one has been able to escape the stench, or if they have, they certainly haven't sold Fire and Fury -level copies . Leave it to Michelle "When they go low, we go high" Obama to meet the challenge.

She is direct, forceful, and condemnatory when speaking about Trump, but in a fashion that doesn't sour or alter her own life story. 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. B

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Becoming Summary & Study Guide

Becoming Summary & Study Guide Description

The following version of this book was used to create this Study Guide: Obama, Michelle. Becoming. Crown, 2018. First Edition.

Michelle Obama’s autobiography is divided into three main sections, each of which corresponds to what she sees as a particular phase of her life. The preface and epilogue that flank these sections provide a present tense introduction and conclusion, written as though Obama is speaking to the reader before launching into past tense storytelling mode. Throughout, Obama weaves anecdotes from her life together with emotional reflection and commentary on social realities.

The autobiography follows a largely chronological telling of Obama’s life. She begins with her childhood and young adult years, a section she titles “Becoming Me.” Obama recounts growing up on the South Side of Chicago, with a particular emphasis on her family and school. She uses her South Side anecdotes to reflect on themes like race and class. This section also includes Obama’s college years and her first job as a lawyer in Chicago. She concludes with meeting Barack and, on the final page of the section, their first kiss.

The second section is titled “Becoming Us,” and outlines the development of Obama’s relationship with Barack. She explores the experience of falling in love. Obama also delves into trials the couple faced as their marriage progressed. She mentions the couples’ struggles getting pregnant and their decision to attend marriage counseling at a time when they were stretched thin by professional and marital responsibilities. She reflects on the challenges of blending professional and familial responsibilities.

Simultaneously, she explores her own professional formation. Obama recounts her career transition – from following the path of “success” to following her heart and passions. Significantly, this section also introduces Barack’s political career, and the advent of Obama’s life as a politician’s wife. She opens up about the ways in which she found both Barack’s schedule and the viciousness of politics to be draining, and the professional choices she made in order to facilitate his political career.

The last section, “Becoming Us,” covers Barack’s election as President of the United States and the family’s eight years in the White House. In this section, Obama describes initiatives she took on as First Lady, including healthy eating and exercise campaigns aimed at children, outreach with military families and service members, support for girls’ education, and projects to allow local students access the White House. She ties these initiatives to larger social issues.

Obama also reflects on the personal challenges she confronted while First Lady. Not least, she was recognized entirely for her relationship to her husband, though, though her initiatives, she aimed to carve a space for herself. Throughout this section, Obama reflects on the ways she was hurt by politically motivated personal attacks on her and Barack, and laments the extent to which she was evaluated based on her appearance. She also ties these challenges to contemporary social realities.

Finally, Obama’s family-centered attitude is on display in this section. She endeavors to maintain as much normalcy as possible for herself and her children. She also strives to set boundaries between political life and family life, although she also recognizes the powerful role her family can play as national and international figureheads, and the ways in which they can serve as models.

The epilogue focuses on her reasons for writing the autobiography and her definition of “becoming.” This section also briefly reflects on Donald Trump’s election. Trump’s election, she acknowledges, marks a departure from the Obamas’ years in the White House. Despite this, Obama concludes with hope. She writes that sharing her non-traditional “success” story is meant to motivate others, and that “becoming” is a process which is never complete.

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Reading Michelle Obama’s “Becoming” as a Motherhood Memoir

“I don’t want to make somebody else,” Toni Morrison’s character Sula declares, when urged to get married and have kids, “I want to make myself.” Morrison herself might have understood this to be a false dichotomy—she was a single mother of two by the time she published “ Sula ,” her second novel, in 1973—but, in her fiction, she split the individualist impulse to make an artful life and the domestic drive to make a home between two characters: Sula and her best friend, Nel. The tensions between these two desires animate the body of fiction and nonfiction about the private lives of women and mothers. It’s a canon that has been dominated by the accounts of white, straight writers, but it now includes Michelle Obama’s blockbuster memoir, “ Becoming .”

What Obama brings to this genre is, first, a powerful sense of self, which precedes and exceeds her domestic relationships—the book’s three sections are titled “Becoming Me,” “Becoming Us,” “Becoming More”—and, second, a conviction that the roles of wife and mother are themselves undefined. She makes and remakes her relationship to both throughout her adult life. In this, she draws on the literature of black women’s self-making that “Sula” represents. The modern matron saint of that tradition is Zora Neale Hurston, who, in a 1928 essay, describes “ How It Feels to Be Colored Me ”: a prismatic, mutable experience of being a loner, a spectacle, an ordinary woman, a goddess (“the eternal feminine with its string of beads”). Lucille Clifton shares Hurston’s sense of the need to invent oneself in a world without reliable mirrors or maps; as she writes in a poem, from 1992, “i had no model. / born in babylon / both nonwhite and woman / what did I see to be except myself? / i made it up…” Like these writers, Obama exposes the particular pressures and thrills of black women’s self-creation. But she also details the rather more modest creation of a stable domestic life. By bringing motherhood, marriage, and self-making together in “Becoming,” she combines the possibilities that Sula and Nel represent.

In some ways, Obama’s desires for a stable home and family are quite conventional, and she uses the conventionally feminine, domestic metaphor of knitting to describe them. “We were learning to adapt, to knit ourselves into a solid and forever form of us,” she writes of the first months of her marriage to Barack. It isn’t easy: in the Robinson-Obama union, the South Side power-walker meets the Hawaii-born ambler; the meticulous planner and striver with an “instinctive love of a crowd” and a desire for family must adapt to the messy, cerebral dreamer who loves solitude and books at least as much as he loves people. Later, the woman who loathes politics must throw her life into her husband’s pursuit of the Presidency.

Things are complicated long before the campaign, as children both complete and unsettle the Obamas’ carefully cultivated “us.” Once Obama gets pregnant, through I.V.F., her resentment at Barack’s distance from the pain of miscarriage and needles gives way to feelings of maternal pride. Upon Malia’s arrival, she writes, “motherhood became my motivator”—yet, three years (and almost twenty pages) later, she is most galvanized by her new full-time job, at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Although she considers staying home when Sasha is born, she instead takes the job, which “[gets her] out of bed in the morning,” though Barack’s comparative absence, as a commuting state and U.S. senator, gets her home in time for dinner. Then, just as Sasha is about to start elementary school and Obama is “on the brink of . . . [firing] up my ambition again and [considering] a new set of goals,” it is decided that Barack should run for President.

Michelle is still driven, but now by a desire not to fail Barack’s growing base of supporters. In an effort to “earn” public approval, she talks a lot about her kids while campaigning—a safe subject for a black woman who was framed in negative contemporary press accounts as an unpatriotic shrew. As the Obamas near the Iowa primaries, Michelle’s growing commitment to Barack’s cause is reflected in her language. Her pronouns shift from “him” to “we”—“Our hopes were pinned on Iowa. We had to win it or otherwise stand down”—and she adopts Barack’s own sermonic listing mode, describing meetings with voters “in Davenport, Cedar Rapids, Council Bluffs . . . in bookstores, union halls, a home for aging military veterans, and, as the weather warmed up, on front porches and in public parks.” Her rhetoric itself knits her and Barack into a “we.”

The book as a whole, however, represents a different moment, and announces her ambition to tell her story in her own way. A long memoir by any measure, “Becoming” not only matches the length of Barack’s first book, “ Dreams from My Father ,” but it also shows Michelle to be a better storyteller than her husband—funnier, and able to generate a surprising degree of suspense about events whose outcomes are a given (the results of Barack’s first run for President, for instance). Having devoted herself to strategically remaking the office of First Lady, through such initiatives as the White House garden and Let Girls Learn, she now reflects on what she has done and who else she might want to become.

Of course, the choices she makes throughout—to focus more and less on work, more and less on family—are a function of privilege. It is a privilege to decide how much or whether to work, and a privilege to have children, whether through I.V.F. or otherwise. The ability to steer one’s own ship also relies on the sheer luck of evading any number of American disasters: layoffs, mass shootings, prison, domestic violence, lack of health care. Then there are the disasters perpetrated by the U.S. surveillance state, which can undo black women, such as Sandra Bland, or their children, such as Kalief Browder. Under these conditions of hypervisibility, no amount of strategic maneuvering can guarantee one’s safety. And, in light of this, the Obamas’ faith in the American system, and in electoral politics, can seem woefully insufficient.

It comes as something of a relief, then, that, even as Michelle seeks to bind her own story to that of her husband and, through him, to that of the nation, the story of her mother, Marian Robinson, hints at an exit. Robinson is a willfully marginal figure in the text, as she was in the White House—famously reluctant to move in, and evasive of its basic security protocols. She gave everything to her kids (“We were their investment,” Michelle writes of her parents’ devotion to their two children) and stood by her husband, Fraser Robinson III, while multiple sclerosis drained him of strength. And yet, it turns out, she harbored fantasies of leaving. It is here that Obama’s portrait of her mother grows most vivid: “Much later, my mother would tell me that every year when spring came and the air warmed up in Chicago, she entertained thoughts about leaving my father. I don’t know if these thoughts were actually serious or not. . . . But for her it was an active fantasy, something that felt healthy and maybe even energizing to ponder, almost as ritual.” Obama sees this ritual as an internal renewal of vows for Marian, akin to how doubts about God might be said to bolster one’s faith. But the fantasy also represents a wholly other possibility: not a knitting-together but an unfurling, a quiet dream of escape.

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91 pages • 3 hours read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

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

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Michelle makes several references to how growing up in the South Side of Chicago impacted her life. What influence did this upbringing have on Michelle?

At various points in her life, Michelle worries about not being good enough. Why is this such a common feeling, even for smart, successful people like Michelle, and how does she overcome it?

Many people view Barack Obama as an important American figure, and sometimes it’s hard to see him as a typical person. How does Michelle’s account of Barack help to humanize him? Why does she make such an effort to show his normalcy?

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What Michelle Obama has said about running for US president

A recent poll showed michelle obama is best placed to beat donald trump in an election, despite her repeated insistence she has no intention of doing so..

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After weeks of pressure from within his party, Joe Biden has dropped out of the presidential race amid concerns over his health and ability to serve another four-year term.

Now, with less than four months to go until the November 5 election, the Democrats must now choose a new nominee to face Donald Trump.

Biden has backed vice president Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee, and a number of other figures once tipped to be considering bids of their own, including Gavin Newsom and Josh Shapiro, have fallen behind her.

Another well-known face, former first lady Michelle Obama, has also been mentioned by some as a candidate they would back - and while she has distanced herself from running, one Ipsos survey at the start of July showed she was the only one of several senior Democrats to poll higher than Trump.

What has Michelle Obama said?

Obama herself was asked if she ever planned on running for office as early as 2012, when her husband was still president.

She told an event at the White House: "Absolutely not. I think that once his terms are over, we'll go on to do other important things, because there are so many ways you can help this country and the world, even if you're not president of the United States."

Obama and her husband have been asked this question during various media appearances and public events in the following years, with the attorney insisting she was "not interested" in a career in politics.

In December 2016 she told Oprah Winfrey she didn't want to put her children through another election campaign, adding: "I'm not coy. I've proven that. I'm pretty direct. If I were interested in it, I would say it. I don't believe in playing games."

She was asked the same question by Winfrey in 2023, and gave the same answer.

"I'm just wondering: Does what I want have anything to do with anything? Does who I choose to be have anything to do with it?," she asked the presenter.

In a Netflix special released last year, Obama said politics is “hard... and the people who get into it… It’s got to be in your soul, because it is so important. It is not in my soul.”

What have Democrats said?

Barack Obama has so far held off from publicly supporting Kamala Harris, calling for a process "from which an outstanding nominee emerges".

Speculation that the former president was holding back in the hope that his wife could be included on the nomination papers is likely to be unfounded - he previously waited until after the 2020 primaries to endorse Biden for president and has long presented himself as above party politics.

Michelle Obama does not appear to have received any public endorsements from major Democratic figures. Despite this, some in the Republican Party still view her as a formidable opponent, albeit a theoretical one.

"I don't think I'd be revealing any sort of polling secrets if I said Michelle Obama would probably be the one person that could step in and keep the party united and probably provide a little bit of a moving start because of her obvious notoriety," Republican senator Kevin Cramer told New York Magazine.

What do the polls say?

Despite repeatedly refusing to run the office, there still appears to be a strong public appetite for her to throw her hat into the ring.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on July 2 found that Obama would outperform Biden among voters. Among those who answered the survey, 50% said they would vote for the former first lady, compared to 39% for Trump.

In comparison, the contest was tighter between Biden and Trump, who both maintained the support of 40% of registered voters.

Ipsos poll: After the first debate, Joe Biden and Donald Trump remain tied in the November elections. And only former first lady Michelle Obama is the only hypothetical candidate who has a strong chance of defeating the Republican candidate: polling now gives her 50% to Trump's… pic.twitter.com/Y6TEpR8iUO — S p r i n t e r (@SprinterFamily) July 3, 2024

In a race between Harris and Trump, there was only one percentage point between them, with 42% backing the vice president compared to 43% for the Republican nominee.

Polling for the Center Square Voters' Voice carried out in January suggested that if Democrat-leaning voters could pick anyone as their party's candidate, Harris would finish in seventh place, the Highland County Press reports.

Out of those who responded, 24% said they would pick Obama, compared to 20% for Biden, 12% for Bernie Sanders and 9% for "someone else", 9% for secretary of transportation Pete Buttigieg, 8% for Hillary Clinton, 7% for Harris and 5% for Elizabeth Warren.

How could she help the Democrat nominee?

While Barack Obama was seen on the campaign trail with Biden, Michelle has not publicly shown her support for the incumbent president's bid. However, her star power could yet be a great asset to Harris if she chooses to back her.

Kevin Munoz, the Biden campaign spokesman, said Obama was “enormously helpful in the fight to beat Donald Trump” in 2020.

After Biden and Harris won the November 2020 election, the Obamas congratulated them in a joint-statement, describing Harris' rise to vice presidency "groundbreaking".

Sharing a post on her Instagram account, Michelle said: "I'm beyond thrilled that my friend Joe Biden and our first Black and Indian-American woman Vice President, Kamala Harris, are headed to restore some dignity, competence, and heart at the White House. Our country sorely needs it."

In August 2020, Obama shared a post on social media explaining what Harris's vice presidential candidacy would mean for young girls.

"I’ve been thinking about all those girls growing up today who will be able to take it for granted that someone who looks like them can grow up to lead a nation like ours. Because @KamalaHarris may be the first, but she won’t be the last," she said. "I am here for it all. Let us embrace and celebrate this moment. Go get ‘em girl."

With this in mind, Obama could be more open to throwing her weight behind Harris's campaign, particularly with the prospect of a Trump victory appearing so close.

Why has Obama not endorsed Harris? (The Telegraph)

Which Democrats have endorsed Kamala Harris – and which haven’t (The Independent)

Joe Biden quits presidential race: What happens next? (The Telegraph)

• 2024 Elections

Fact-Checking False Claims About Kamala Harris

T he announcement that Vice President Kamala Harris will seek the Democratic nomination for President is inspiring a wave of false claims about her eligibility and her background. Some first emerged years ago, while others only surfaced after President Joe Biden’s decision to end his bid for a second term.

Here’s a look at the facts.

Harris is not an American citizen and therefore cannot serve as commander in chief.

Completely false. Harris is a natural born U.S. citizen. She was born on Oct. 20, 1964, in Oakland, California, according to a copy of her birth certificate, obtained by the Associated Press.

Her mother, a cancer researcher from India, and her father, an economist from Jamaica, met as graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley.

Under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, anyone born on U.S. soil is considered a natural born U.S. citizen and eligible to serve as either the Vice President or President.

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside,” reads the amendment.

There is no question or legitimate debate about whether a citizen like Harris is eligible to serve as President or Vice President, said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School.

“So many legal questions are really nuanced—this isn’t one of those situations,” Levinson told the AP on Monday.

Still, social media posts making the debunked assertion that Harris cannot serve as President went viral soon after Biden announced Sunday that he was dropping out of the race and would back Harris for President.

“Kamala Harris is not eligible to run for President,” read one post on X that was liked more than 34,000 times. “Neither of her parents were natural born American citizens when she was born.”

False assertions about Harris’ eligibility began circulating in 2019 when she launched her bid for the presidency. They got a boost, thanks in part to then-President Donald Trump, when Biden selected her as his running mate.

“I heard today that she doesn’t meet the requirements,” the Republican said of Harris in 2019.

Harris is not Black.

This is false. Harris is Black and Indian. Her father, Donald Harris, is a Black man who was born in Jamaica. Shyamala Gopalan, her mother, was born in southern India. Harris has spoken publicly for many years, including in her 2019 autobiography , about how she identifies with the heritage of both her parents.

Despite ample evidence to the contrary, social media users are making erroneous claims about Harris’ race.

“Just a reminder that Kamala Harris @KamalaHarris isn’t black,” reads one X post that had received approximately 42,000 likes and 20,400 shares as of Monday. “She Indian American. She pretends to be black as part of the delusional, Democrat DEI quota.”

But Harris is both Black and Indian. Indeed, she is the first woman, Black person and person of South Asian descent to serve as Vice President. This fact is highlighted in her biography on WhiteHouse.gov and she has spoken about her ethnicity on many occasions.

Harris wrote in her autobiography, The Truths We Hold: An American Journey , that she identifies with the heritage of both her mother and father.

“My mother, grandparents, aunts, and uncle instilled us with pride in our South Asian roots,” she wrote. “Our classical Indian names harked back to our heritage, and we were raised with a strong awareness and appreciation for Indian culture.”

In the next paragraph, she adds, “My mother understood very well that she was raising two black daughters.” Harris again refers to herself as a “black woman” in the book’s next chapter.

Harris got her start by having an affair with a married man, California politician Willie Brown.

This is missing some important context. Brown was separated from his wife during the relationship, which was not a secret.

Brown, 90, is a former mayor of San Francisco who was serving as speaker of the California State Assembly in the 1990s when he and Harris were in a relationship. Brown had separated from his wife in 1982.

“Yes, we dated. It was more than 20 years ago,” Brown wrote in 2020 in the San Francisco Chronicle under the article title, “Sure, I dated Kamala Harris. So what?”

He wrote that he supported Harris’ first race to be San Francisco district attorney—just as he has supported a long list of other California politicians, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Harris, 59, was state attorney general from 2011-2017 and served in the Senate from 2017 until 2021, when she became Vice President . She has been married to Doug Emhoff since 2014.

Harris’ critics have used the past relationship to question her qualifications, as Fox News personality Tomi Lahren did when she wrote on social media in 2019: “Kamala did you fight for ideals or did you sleep your way to the top with Willie Brown.” Lahren later apologized for the comment.

Trump and some of his supporters have also highlighted the nearly three-decade old relationship in recent attacks on Harris.

An Inside Edition clip of television host Montel Williams holding hands with Harris and another woman is proof that Harris was his “side piece.”

The clip shows Montel with Harris and his daughter, Ashley Williams. Harris and Williams, a former marine who hosted “The Montel Williams Show” for more than a decade, dated briefly in the early 2000s.

In the clip, taken from a 2019 Inside Edition segment , Williams can be seen posing for photographs and holding hands with both women as they arrive at the 2001 Eighth Annual Race to Erase MS in Los Angeles.

But social media users are misrepresenting the clip, using it as alleged evidence that Harris was Montel’s “side piece”—a term used to describe a person, typically a woman, who has a sexual relationship with a man in a monogamous relationship.

Williams addressed the false claims in an X post on Monday, writing in reference to the Inside Edition clip, “as most of you know, that is my daughter to my right.” Getty Images photos from the Los Angeles gala identify the women as Harris and Ashley Williams.

In 2019, Williams  described his relationship  with Harris in a post on X, then known as Twitter.

“@KamalaHarris and I briefly dated about 20 years ago when we were both single,” he wrote in an X post at the time. “So what? I have great respect for Sen. Harris. I have to wonder if the same stories about her dating history would have been written if she were a male candidate?”

Harris promised to inflict the “vengeance of a nation” on Trump supporters.

A fabricated quote attributed to Harris is spreading online five years after it first surfaced.

In the quote, Harris supposedly promises that if Trump is defeated in 2020, Trump supporters will be targeted by the federal government: “Once Trump’s gone and we have regained our rightful place in the White House, look out if you supported him and endorsed his actions, because we’ll be coming for you next. You will feel the vengeance of a nation.”

The quote was shared again on social media this week. One post on X containing an image of the quote was shared more than 22,000 times as of Monday afternoon.

The remarks didn’t come from Harris , but from a satirical article published online in August 2019. Shortly after, Trump supporters like musician Ted Nugent reposted the comments without noting they were fake.

A video shows Harris saying in a speech: “Today is today. And yesterday was today yesterday. Tomorrow will be today tomorrow. So live today, so the future today will be as the past today as it is tomorrow.”

Harris never said this. Footage from a 2023 rally on reproductive rights at Howard University, her alma mater, was altered to make it seem as though she did.

In the days after Harris headlined the Washington rally, Republicans mocked a real clip of her speech, with one critic dubbing her remarks a “word salad,” the AP reported at the time .

Harris says in the clip: “So I think it’s very important—as you have heard from so many incredible leaders—for us, at every moment in time, and certainly this one, to see the moment in time in which we exist and are present, and to be able to contextualize it, to understand where we exist in the history and in the moment as it relates not only to the past, but the future.”

NARAL Pro-Choice America, an abortion rights nonprofit whose president also spoke at the rally,  livestreamed  the original footage. It shows Harris making the “moment in time” remark, but not the “today is today” comment.

The White House’s transcript of Harris’ remarks also does not include the statement from the altered video. Harris’ appearance at the event came the same day that Biden announced their reelection bid.

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On Fox News, Project 2025 contributor says Michelle Obama will run for president because she “squares the Kamala Harris circle: being a minority and a DEI hire”

Monica Crowley: “She's immune to criticism as a woman of color”

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published 07/21/24 9:42 PM EDT

Project 2025  is a massive right-wing plan led by the Heritage Foundation to provide policy and staffing to a future Republican president. Monica Crowley is a  former Trump administration official  and right-wing media figure  touted for a position  in a second Trump term; she is listed as a contributor in the Project 2025 policy book,  Mandate for Leadership .

Citation From the July 21, 2024, edition of Fox News'  Jesse Watters Primetime 

JESSE WATTERS (HOST): This is just like lambs to the slaughter. They're looking at Biden, tell me how you see it — they're looking at Biden landslide, Kamala, and one of these white midwestern guys. Maybe a little less of a landslide, Monica? 

MONICA CROWLEY (PROJECT 2025 CONTRIBUTOR): Well assuming, Jesse, that it ends up being Kamala Harris as the nominee and I know a lot of big Democrats are endorsing her. But the one voice that's been silent on Kamala is Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama. They've been very quiet. So, I think maybe Michelle Obama still may be in the mix. That being said, if in fact, they go head --

WATTERS: Wait, wait, a second. Is Michelle Obama — Michelle Obama's in the mix? Is in the mix in Chicago in her hometown? 

CROWLEY: Well, there is a reason why the Democrats moved their convention to Chicago, Jesse. So, they could recruit her, they could position her as the reluctant candidate. She's a woman of color so that squares the Kamala Harris circle: being a minority and a DEI hire. So, Michelle Obama dismisses all of that. 

Look, I don't know how likely that is but I don't want everyone falling into this trap that Kamala Harris is the defacto candidate for the Democrats. This story is not over yet. Jesse, realize that the left's powerbrokers never move without a plan. So, while everybody is distracted with this chaos circus, there are powers that be, namely Barack and Michelle Obama and the entire Obama machine that's essentially run this country over the last three and a half years that wants an Obama 4 and 5.0.

And what better way to do that to run Michelle where they can position her as somebody who didn't really want to do it but she was recruited. She's a pristine candidate. She's immune to criticism as a woman of color. And if they run her they could raise about a billion dollars in two, three days.

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Biden Drops Out of Race, Scrambling the Campaign for the White House

The president’s withdrawal under pressure from fellow Democrats cleared the way for a new nominee to take on former President Donald J. Trump in the fall. He quickly endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris.

By Peter Baker

Peter Baker has covered the past five presidents and written multiple books about the presidency.

• July 21, 2024

President Biden on Sunday abruptly abandoned his campaign for a second term under intense pressure from fellow Democrats and threw his support to Vice President Kamala Harris to lead their party in a dramatic last-minute bid to stop former President Donald J. Trump from returning to the White House.

“It has been the greatest honor of my life to serve as your President,” Mr. Biden said in a letter posted on social media. “And while it has been my intention to seek re-election, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term.”

Mr. Biden then posted a subsequent online message endorsing Ms. Harris. “My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President,” he wrote. “And it’s been the best decision I’ve made. Today I want to offer my full support and endorsement for Kamala to be the nominee of our party this year. Democrats — it’s time to come together and beat Trump. Let’s do this.”

The president’s decision upended the race and set the stage for a raucous and unpredictable campaign unlike any in modern times, leaving Ms. Harris just 107 days to consolidate support from Democrats, establish herself as a credible national leader and prosecute the case against Mr. Trump. Recent polls have shown her competitive with and even slightly ahead of Mr. Trump.

Although Democratic convention delegates must ratify the choice of Ms. Harris to take over as standard-bearer next month, Mr. Biden’s endorsement meant the nomination was hers to lose and she appeared in a powerful position to claim it. While Mr. Biden, 81, remained president and still planned to finish out his term in January, the transition of the campaign to Ms. Harris, 59, amounted to a momentous generational change of leadership of the Democratic Party.

The president said he would “speak to the nation later this week in more detail about my decision,” although it was not clear when he would do that as he recovers from Covid at his vacation house in Rehoboth Beach, Del.

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