Becoming

Michelle, Craig, and her mother reel from her father’s death. Losing her father makes Michelle realize even more how much she wants to change her life path and take advantage of the time she has. She reaches out to as many different foundations and companies as she can, trying to speak to them about job openings.

One afternoon, Michelle visits the office of Art Sussman, the in-house legal counsel for the University of Chicago. Michelle had never once visited the school—it seemed too elite for her growing up on the South Side. Art is surprised to hear this, and Michelle feels a small twinge of purpose: she could recognize community issues with the University that Art never could.

Art passes along Michelle’s resume to a few people, which eventually leads her to a woman named Valerie Jarrett—the newly appointed deputy chief of staff to the mayor of Chicago. She had, like Michelle, realized that law was not for her after spending some time working at a law firm. She was drawn to city hall by Harold Washington, the first African American mayor of Chicago who was elected in 1983. He had kindled a “larger spirit of progressivism” and had won the office by a hair.

Valerie was thirty when she joined Washington’s staff, but only a few months later, Washington tragically had a heart attack, and Richard M. Daley was elected to replace him—a move that many saw as “a swift and demoralizing return to the old white ways of Chicago politics.”

When Michelle visits Valerie at city hall for the first time, she is “simultaneously taken aback and completely enthralled by the clunky, controlled chaos of the place.” She is immediately smitten with Valerie, and she is grateful to talk to someone with a similar background but who is a few years ahead in her career path. She also asks Valerie many questions, trying to determine whether she is suited for this kind of work. It would also mean a drastic pay cut and a change in lifestyle.

Michelle acknowledges that she, like many people around her growing up, had little faith in politics, which had “traditionally been used against black folks.” Still, she is intrigued when Valerie offers her a job. Michelle says she has to think about it, but she asks a final question: whether she can introduce Valerie to Barack.

Barack had finished school a few months after Michelle’s father passed away, and he moved back to Chicago afterward. He and Michelle relish being a “short-distance couple” after two long years apart. Barack sells an idea for a nonfiction book about race and identity to a New York publisher and is given an advance and a year to complete the manuscript. He is also fielding many job offers, such as a job at Sidley & Austin, a fellowship at the University of Chicago, and positions at smaller public interest firms.

Michelle admires how Barack believes his opportunities are endless and doesn’t worry about whether they will dry up. He is also the lone voice telling Michelle to go for the job at city hall, amid all of Michelle’s doubts and her parents’ advice.

Three years earlier, Michelle had sat for the bar exam: a two-day, twelve-hour exam meant to prove a lawyer’s knowledge. But after Michelle took the test, she opened the exam results to find that she had failed. Michelle was shocked at her failure. She felt she’d let down everyone who had ever taught or encouraged her. In the aftermath, she buckled down and studied for a second test, passing it “handily,” but the sting of the first failure remains with her. This is why Michelle regards Barack’s studying (or lack of it) with curiosity. She knows that he’ll pass the bar, but she’s a little annoyed with how confident he is.

Barack and Michelle celebrate his achievement on the day he completes the exam, going to a nice restaurant. At dinner, the topic of marriage arises, and Barack confesses that he doesn’t really see the point. They debate over why they should or shouldn’t get married, until the waiter comes around with the dessert plate. When he lifts the cover, Michelle sees a small box instead of dessert. She realizes that his whole debate was meant to bait her—to argue one final time. Barack drops to one knee and asks if Michelle would marry him. She says yes.

Shortly after Michelle accepts Barack’s proposal, she accepts the job at city hall. Barack accepts a position at a public interest law firm. Before they start at their respective jobs, they take a vacation together to Kenya. She feels completely foreign there, but she is welcomed by Barack’s family. Barack had visited once before, and so he was more at home than Michelle. Michelle writes that “the in-betweenness” of being African American in Africa gives her a feeling of sadness, as if she belongs in neither place. Still, she is happy to spend time with Barack and his family in a world completely foreign to her own.