Becoming

by

Michelle Obama

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Becoming: Chapter 22 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
One spring morning, a petting zoo of big cats (lions, cheetahs, panthers) arrives at the White House, and they are let free on the lawn. When Michelle, Barack, Sasha, and Malia go out to see them, assured that they have bene sedated, the cats lunge the family. The Secret Service runs out, tranquilizer guns in hand, but they miss the lions and hit Sasha. Michelle then bolts upright in bed, having had a very bad dream.
The lions are a metaphorical example of some of the issues that Michelle goes on to discuss in this chapter. Being in the White House puts Michelle and her family closer to danger and tragedy, and she and Barack constantly feel the weight of responsibility to absorb and respond to that tragedy.
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Michelle constantly feels vulnerable, and she is newly aware of the chaos and tragedy of the world: an earthquake in Haiti, an oil rig explosion, revolution in Egypt. She understands both Barack’s and her responsibility to remain calm in the face of tragedy, hardship, and confusion. After the BP oil spill is cleaned up, many Americans are wary of swimming in the Gulf of Mexico. So the family takes a vacation to Florida to swim in the water, a symbolic gesture that the water is safe.
These national and global emergencies are the literal examples of what the lions had stood in for in Michelle’s dream. Not only is it Barack’s obligation to address these issues both nationally and internationally, but he must also constantly create plans of action to remedy such catastrophes, or at the very least find ways to bolster the spirits of the American people.
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Power, Privilege, and Responsibility Theme Icon
In the midst of tragedy, Michelle also sees, there is resilience. She visits military members and their families in hospitals, quickly realizing that often the last thing that they needed was “anyone’s pity.” One sign outside a door instructs visitors not to feel sorry for him, as he got his injuries serving a country he loves. Michelle writes that she’s never seen the “fortitude and loyalty” that she found during these visits—describing an instance when a severely injured young man had seen Michelle and tried to stand up to salute the wife of his commander in chief.
Michelle recognizes the optimism inherent to military personnel and their families, where even in the midst of their own personal tragedies, they work hard to not let their injuries or losses define them. As this sign on the door implies, their injuries are the sacrifice that they made in order to do something they loved and felt passionate about.
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Despite the weight on Barack’s shoulders, he manages to be “admirably present and undistracted” when he is with Michelle and the girls. Michelle and Barack try not to speak about work, instead focusing on tales and updates from their daughters’ lives.
 Michelle and Barack demonstrate that while they now have become the face of a nation, they also have to juggle this position with prioritizing their daughters.
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A year after launching Let’s Move!, Michelle and her team see results. They have installed six thousand salad bars in school cafeterias. Walmart has pledged to cut the amount of sugar, salt, and fat in its food products and reduced prices on produce. Five hundred mayors in towns across the country have committed to tackling childhood obesity on the local level.
Throughout the first year of her initiative, Michelle finds different ways to grow the program. Her faith in the idea that people and companies will want to join the initiative pays off, and she garners a lot of support to help fulfill her goals.
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Michelle had also worked hard in 2010 to push a new child nutrition bill through Congress, wading into politics for the first time. The law expands healthy food in public schools and regulates junk food that is sold to children via vending machines. The bill passes just before Republicans gain control of the House after the midterms. She proudly watches as Barack signs it into law, knowing that she is responsible not only for this but also for creating a network of advocates speaking up for children’s health.
Even though Michelle dislikes politics, she understands the unique position she is in, particularly having the support of Barack and the Democrats in Congress. Thus, she takes advantage of her position of power in order to push for an initiative she knows is vital to kids nationwide.
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Michelle takes on a second initiative with Jill Biden called Joining Forces. They identify concrete ways to support military families, like reaching out to powerful CEOs and getting them to commit to hire “a significant number of veterans and military spouses.” They get pledges from universities to train teachers and professors to better understand the needs of military children. And they try to fight the stigma surrounding mental health issues that many troops experience when returning home.
Even with her many successes on Let’s Move!, Michelle refuses to simply rest on her laurels. In a testament to her desire to continue to find personal growth and fulfillment by helping other people, she begins another initiative that helps army veterans and their families. As she writes at the end of the book, she hopes to always continue to grow and do more for others.
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While the issues that Michelle takes on are somewhat compact and manageable, Barack’s are not. She observes how he consumes as much information as possible to make informed decisions about the country’s future. The last thing he does each night is  read ten letters from Americans, selected by a staffer from the fifteen thousand that pour in each day. Some are positive and some are critical, but he views it as part of the responsibility that comes with the office to know what Americans are experiencing.
While Michelle works to fulfill her own responsibility to the American people, she emphasizes that so too does Barack. Not only does he tackle the larger political issues, but he also tries to stay informed of the more personal, individual concerns of average Americans. He does not shy away from criticism; like Michelle, he always works to improve.
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In the winter of 2011, Michelle and Barack begin hearing that reality-show host and New York real-estate developer Donald Trump is thinking about running for president. He often gives “yammering, inexpert critiques of Barack’s foreign policy decisions” and openly questions Barack’s American citizenship, giving new life to the so-called “birthers.” Michelle writes that this theory’s “underlying bigotry and xenophobia” are “hardly concealed,” but on top of that it is dangerous, fueling hatred and threats made against Barack.
Even though Donald Trump does not run for president against Barack in the 2012 election, this foreshadows his eventual run and win in 2016 against Hillary Clinton. Michelle emphasizes how his politics represent not only a return to the whiteness and maleness that has been typical of past Washington politics, but also an open embrace of the racism that has undergirded the political system for so long.
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A few months after the birther rumors resurface, a man parks his car close to the White House and fires a semi-automatic rifle at the top floors. A bullet hits one of the windows in a room where Michelle likes to have tea. No one is hurt, but Michelle’s mother and Sasha were home. For weeks Michelle looks at the crater in the bulletproof glass in the window, knowing how vulnerable they are.
This story demonstrates how Trump’s words and the ideas behind them are not harmless: for many people, including the Obamas, the racism of many people who think like Trump is actively dangerous and often life-threatening to them.
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Michelle has been concerned for her family’s safety for years, and many people openly and earnestly express their concerns for her family’s safety, as well. Once, a mother of another student asked Malia, practicing on the tennis courts at her school, if she was afraid to be out in the open. Malia responded, “If you’re asking me whether I ponder my death every day, the answer is no.” The mother later wrote a note apologizing to Michelle for putting stress on a child who could do nothing about it.
The fact that so many people “openly and earnestly” worry about the safety of the Obamas only emphasizes how real the danger is, and how people understand that they are especially vulnerable because of their race. Yet Malia’s response to this mother’s words also emphasizes their resilience in the face of this kind of hatred and worry.
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Race, Gender, and Politics Theme Icon
Though Michelle sees the challenges her daughters face, she knows that they have a great deal of advantage in their lives. Michelle feels that she has a larger obligation to children in general, to give them some of the opportunity she experienced in her life. She realizes that her accomplishments were largely owed to the “many small ways [she’d] been buttressed over the years, and the people who’d helped build [her] confidence over time."
Michelle again recognizes the importance for children to know that they have an adult who cares about them and wants to invest in them. Michelle thus sees giving back to other children as not only a means of helping to spread the privilege that her own daughters experience, but also paying back her own family and the mentors who’d supported her.
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With this in mind, Michelle starts a leadership and mentoring program at the White House, choosing twenty high school girls from around D.C. and pairing them with a female mentor, coming to the white house for monthly get-togethers like informal chats, field trips, and sessions on things like choosing a career. She hopes that they go on to feel comfortable and confident in any room, raising their voice anywhere.
Michelle thus uses her passion for investing in children to give back in her own way—also by making the White House more accessible to those high schoolers, who would not have had that opportunity otherwise. Michelle finds it important for them to know that they, too, can make it to the White House, despite politics being a predominantly male field.
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Community, Investment, and Hard Work Theme Icon
Race, Gender, and Politics Theme Icon
Two years after arriving at the White House, Michelle and Barack continue to try to ease the formality of the place by inviting more people, and especially children, when foreign dignitaries or artists visit. She wants to highlight the importance of exposing kids to the arts, knowing how the arts have contributed to her own development. She recalls when a young composer named Lin-Manuel Miranda attended the first White House poetry and spoken-word event and debuted a song from a project he was just beginning, a musical about former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton.
Michelle includes this reference to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, a work that recasts the founding fathers as young people of color, in order to call back to it later when she sees the complete work. The work promotes the idea that both the America of the past and the America of today are built by a wide variety of people, not just the white men that have largely dominated the country’s highest offices.
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Over the years, Michelle has learned to keep her true friends close—she is still greatly connected to the group of mothers that she became a part of several years earlier. In 2011, Michelle makes an effort to reinvest in those friendships, and to recognize that sometimes it’s okay to prioritize herself and her friends, especially when she is so used to sacrificing so much for kids and spouses. She organizes getaway trips for herself and these friends.
While Michelle has spent much of the book demonstrating how being a wife, a mother, and a working woman at the same time requires both compromises and sacrifices, she makes it a point to acknowledge that sometimes it is necessary to take time for herself, rather than giving all of her energy others.
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On the first Sunday in May 2011, Michelle goes out to dinner on a particularly busy weekend. She arrives home to discover that Barack is about to address the nation. Michelle catches Barack in the hallway of the residence. “We got him,” he says, “and no one got hurt.” This is how Michelle learns that a team of U.S. Navy SEALs had stormed a compound in Pakistan and killed Osama bin Laden. That evening, people take to the streets, linked both by patriotism and the grief that had been borne on 9/11. America gets a chance to “feel its own resilience.”
After being elected by the American people based on the promise they saw in Barack’s hope and optimism, Americans have a moment of seeing that hope and optimism come home to roost. For a country that faced a national tragedy in 2001, followed by several wars and an economic crisis, Michelle acknowledges that bin Laden’s death is a benchmark for the country’s ability to recover and progress in spite of hardship.
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