Becoming

When Michelle begins high school, her mother goes back to work—a “welcome shift in routine,” but also a financial necessity, given the fact that Craig is soon to start college. He has been recruited by an expensive Catholic school to play on their basketball team, and by the end of his junior year, he is being courted by many Division I schools. But still, Michelle’s mother and father encourage him to keep his options open and get into the best school he can—letting them worry about the cost.

Michelle tests into Chicago’s first magnet high school, Whitney M. Young High School, which has quickly become one of the best public schools in the city. The school was designed to foster equal opportunity, and about 80 percent of the students are nonwhite. The school is a long bus ride away, but it represents a new frontier for Michelle.

Whitney Young High School makes Michelle feel like a small fish in a big pond. She worries that she might not be good enough. At Bryn Mawr, she had been known as Craig’s little sister, and he had created a strong precedent for her and enabled her to be confident. But here, she worries that she is in competition with the other kids, all of whom have been selected for their intelligence. She worries that being the best student in “a middling, mostly black school” might not have prepared her for this next step.

Michelle spends nearly three hours on the bus every day and observes how big Chicago really is. This is echoed by her experience in school. Most of her friends are black, but that doesn’t translate to the exact same background. Many of the black students knew each other through an African American social club called Jack and Jill, and had been on ski vacations and international trips that Michelle had never experienced. She describes how this gives her a glimpse of “the apparatus of privilege and connection.”

Michelle gets good grades throughout her first year, and she builds up some confidence. She’s not a straight A student, but she’s close, and she understands that the more hours of studying she puts in, the more she can achieve. Craig, meanwhile, enrolls at Princeton. Michelle’s parents never talk about the stress of paying for college, but she understands it is there.

Michelle tries to relieve her parents of some of the burden by not asking for anything more than she needs. When her French teacher announces that there will be an optional class trip to Paris on a break, Michelle doesn’t bring it up at home. But when Michelle’s parents learn of the trip, they tell her not to worry about the money that it will cost. Michelle knows that her parents have never taken trips like this—all of their money goes into their kids. She feels guilty and unsure of what to say. A few months later, she takes the trip to Paris with her friends.

Michelle becomes friends with a girl in her class named Santita Jackson, who is the oldest child of Reverend Jesse Jackson. He worked closely with Martin Luther King Jr. and was a mesmerizing political celebrity. He called for black people to “shake off the undermining ghetto stereotypes and claim their long-denied political power.” He preaches a message of hope, and wants communities to remain involved and invested in the future.

Being around the Jackson home gives Michelle an early glimpse into the world of politics: schedules and plans rarely seem to stick. She watches as Jesse Jackson enters a vortex of politics, as he is at this point only a few years from formally launching a Presidential campaign. This involves making connections, raising money, and laying a groundwork of support. He would be only the second African American to run a serious national presidential campaign. Michelle quickly understands, even viewing it at a relative distance, that this chaotic life is not one that she particularly enjoys.

Michelle begins to look at colleges, and she and Santita both focus on schools on the East Coast. Michelle visits Craig at Princeton, and it quickly becomes her top choice without much thought—she figures that anything Craig can do, she can do as well. When Michelle brings this up to a college counselor at Whitney Young, however, the woman tells her that she might not be “Princeton material.” Michelle is disheartened by this dismissive statement. “Had I decided to believe her,” she writes, “her pronouncement would have toppled my confidence all over again, reviving the old thrum of not enough, not enough.”

Even though Michelle is disappointed by this presentiment of failure, she does not let it rattle her. Instead, she seeks help from an assistant principal who knows her well, who agrees to write her a recommendation letter. She gets back to work, focusing on getting good grades and telling her personal story in her college essay. Ultimately, she proves the guidance counselor wrong, as several months later, she gets an acceptance letter from Princeton. She doesn’t stop in to tell the college counselor she was wrong—she had only been proving her capabilities to herself.