PDF Summary:Becoming, by Michelle Obama
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1-Page PDF Summary of Becoming
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.
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A few years later, her family visited some Black friends who had moved to a white community in the suburbs. While they were there, someone vandalized Michelle’s father's treasured Buick Electra, which was parked on the street. Her family never knew who did it, but her mother assumed the neighbors wanted to discourage more Black people from moving in.
When Michelle turned 17 and headed off to Princeton, for the first time in her life she found herself to be the only black woman in the classroom. She had to muster the courage to speak up in class despite the difference in her skin color and gender.
4. Persisting in the Face of Adversity
Michelle's experiences taught her to remain optimistic and not let setbacks steer her off course. Her father served as a role model, never complaining about his disability caused by multiple sclerosis. He simply accepted his condition and did his best to ignore it.
Her parents modeled optimism in the way they believed education could bring their children a better life. And when Michelle's high school guidance counselor told her that she wasn’t "Princeton material," Michelle ignored her, applied to the college, and got accepted.
In her eight years as first lady, Michelle met hundreds of highly accomplished people, many of whom told a story similar to hers: Someone in their young years doubted their ability to succeed at their goals. The naysayers, critics, and doubters are always standing at the door, but the most successful people learn to push right past them.
The people whom Michelle admires most remain optimistic in the face of great struggles. First, there’s Barack, who firmly believes that people can work toward creating a better society. But she names many other models of hope and inspiration, including Nelson Mandela, whom she met on a trip to South Africa, and the wounded warriors at Walter Reed Hospital, who inspired her with their resiliency.
Michelle notes that even her own story can be told in both pessimistic and optimistic ways: In one story, she grew up in a too-small house with not much money in a neighborhood that had begun to decay. In another version, she grew up in a music-filled house with a close-knit, loving family who believed in the importance of higher education. In the former story, she is disadvantaged. In the latter, she has every chance at success.
5. Learning to Believe in Yourself
Michelle’s major concerns during the first 50 years or her life could be filed under one overarching question: Am I good enough? The questions and doubts began after middle school, when she got accepted to a high-achieving high school. She felt insecure about her intelligence—would she be able to measure up against the other students, many of whom come from privileged backgrounds? But she soon learned that if she studied hard enough, she could easily keep up with them.
Later, in her first year at Princeton, she again felt insecure about her background, her education, and her abilities. Would she be able to make her mark in classrooms full of white men? She quickly learned they weren’t smarter than she was; they were just more self-confident.
Many years later, when she campaigned for Barack, the media vilified her. She questioned whether she was helping or hurting her husband's career. But she worked hard at improving her public speaking skills and her media persona, and she played a major role in Barack’s win.
When she became first lady, she knew that the world was scrutinizing her because she was the first Black woman to hold this position. The question "am I good enough?" continued to haunt her. But as she made major strides in advancing her political initiatives, she realized that the answer was a resounding “yes.”
6. Being Proud of Your Unique Story
During the campaign for Presidency, Michelle struggled to find the right words to frame the many twists, turns, and contradictions of her life story. Ultimately, she followed her mother's advice—to tell her story truthfully and authentically.
Michelle believes that too many people, especially women and minorities, go through their lives feeling ashamed of where they've come from or what their backgrounds are. They think that their truth doesn't live up to the established ideal, so they keep it hidden. But finding your own voice and telling your own truth is critical to the process of self-creation. You can’t be fully yourself until you embrace every part of your story—past, present, and future.
7. Living Under the Weight of Privilege
Even before becoming first lady, Michelle was acutely aware of her privilege, which could take a variety of forms. She understood there’s inherent privilege in what class or race you're born into, but there's also privilege in being a mother who can choose how much to work—full- or part-time—or whether to work at all. There's even privilege in being able to have children, whether through in vitro fertilization or otherwise. Sometimes privilege is based on the sheer luck of evading life's catastrophes: layoffs, mass shootings, domestic violence, lack of health care, poverty, prison, and so on.
As Michelle’s daughters grew up in the White House, Michelle saw how many advantages they enjoyed compared to millions of girls all over the world who didn’t even have access to education. Michelle believes the only answer to living under the weight of privilege is to find a way to serve others—to do what you can to create more advantages for everyone.
8. Living Under the Spotlight’s Glare
While the role of first lady was an extremely high privilege, it came with a difficult downside: The media and public officials constantly scrutinized and criticized Michelle (one U.S. Congressman even made jokes about her hips).
Michelle yearned for privacy for herself and her children. She craved simple, private-citizen freedoms, like going shopping by herself or taking her kids on field trips without causing a scene everywhere she went. She wanted to be free of the constant presence of cameras and cell phones, to not always be concerned about what clothes she wore or how her hair looked. Most important, she wanted the media and the public to leave her daughters alone so they could live their childhood and teenage years as normally as possible.
But this, she knew, was impossible. Presidential life did not afford the luxury of privacy, and each member of the Obama family would need to find ways to live with that.
As First Lady, Michelle Worked for Positive Change
The role of a first lady doesn’t come with a job description or even with official responsibilities. And yet, the position wields tremendous power, and Michelle wanted to use her power to bring positive change. During her eight years in the White House, while raising her two daughters, she pushed through four major initiatives. They were:
Let's Move: Initiative for Children's Health
Concerned about the childhood obesity epidemic, Michelle established a public health initiative that addressed family nutrition and exercise. At the time, nearly a third of American children were overweight or obese, and Type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure were common.
With the help of a group of fifth graders, Michelle planted a vegetable garden on the South Lawn of the White House, and she used it to draw attention to several messages:
- Families needed to learn how to feed their children healthier foods.
- Grocery stores needed greater access to fresh produce, and it had to be priced so that poor families could afford it.
- The food and beverage industry had to stop "supersizing" everything.
- Ad agencies had to stop targeting children with commercials for sugary cereals and processed foods.
Michelle and her staff also developed the Let’s Move! campaign to get kids exercising. Michelle hula-hooped on the South Lawn and guest-starred on “Sesame Street” to discuss vegetables with Big Bird. When reporters from health magazines interviewed her, she explained that rising obesity levels meant rising health care costs and that many poor Americans didn't have access to fresh, affordable produce.
Michelle's campaign for family health resulted in several victories, including better labeling for sodas and other beverages, a commitment by the suppliers of school lunches to cut fat, sugar, and salt in their meals, and the establishment of a federal task force on childhood obesity.
Joining Forces: Initiative for Military Families
Michelle’s visits to military hospitals and talks with hundreds of wounded soldiers and their families inspired her to start an initiative called Joining Forces. Its goal was to establish concrete ways for Americans to rally around military service members, veterans, and their families and support them through wellness, education, and employment.
Joining Forces worked in tandem with the public and private sector to find jobs for veterans and help them get access to higher education. It also created media campaigns to fight the stigma behind PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder.
Reach Higher: Initiative for Higher Education
Concerned about the number of school-age children being killed by gun violence, Michelle launched an education initiative called Reach Higher. The goal was to get more kids interested in continuing their education beyond high school—whether through a professional training program, community college, or four-year college or university—by making them aware of the ways they could get there.
Michelle knew that many school-age kids, especially in urban areas, did not have mentors or role models to make them aware of what they could achieve. These kids needed to learn what their career and college opportunities were and how they could access them. Reach Higher provided financial assistance to high school guidance counselors to help students get into college, set up programs for summer internships and learning opportunities, and made it easier for students to obtain federal financial aid.
Let Girls Learn: Initiative for Global Girls’ Education
In her final year as first lady, Michelle launched her fourth initiative, Let Girls Learn. Inspired by Malala Yousafzai, a Pakistani teenager who had been shot by the Taliban because she advocated for girls to go to school, Michelle started a government-wide initiative to give girls around the globe better access to education.
Michelle felt a personal connection to the importance of schooling: Education was her ticket to a better life, and she knew it would be true for others. She enlisted celebrity friends, including Stephen Colbert and Kelly Clarkson, to add some star power to her campaign. She got Diane Warren to write the pop song "This is For My Girls." Profits from the song helped to fund girls' education around the world. Michelle even guest-starred on James Corden's YouTube show Carpool Karaoke to help raise awareness.
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