Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Becoming, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Optimism, Growth, and Fulfillment
Community, Investment, and Hard Work
Race, Gender, and Politics
Marriage, Parenthood, and Work
Power, Privilege, and Responsibility
Summary
Analysis
Chicago starts to feel more and more distant to Michelle, though she keeps up with a few friends including Santita Jackson. Santita is at Howard University, a college whose population is almost entirely black, and Michelle envies her for not being isolated based on her race.
Michelle draws a distinction between her and Santita’s experience to reinforce how the racism that has led Princeton to be a primarily white institution adds an extra layer of difficulty to college that Michelle has to overcome.
Themes
Michelle majors in sociology and is making good grades in her sophomore year. She constantly remarks on how different the world she lives in is from the world where she’s from. When people ask Michelle where she’s from, she says “Chicago,” adding, “the South Side.” She knows that this probably conjures bad stereotypes of a ghetto or gang violence, but she feels it is important to represent a different piece of the South Side to people.
Even among the racist stereotypes and preconceptions that people have of Michelle’s neighborhood, she is insistent on educating people and shattering those stereotypes. This will become an important quality for her later when she is forced to confront the stereotypes that people have of her and Barack nationwide.
Themes
Michelle has one relative in Princeton, Dandy’s younger sister whom she calls Aunt Sis. Aunt Sis, she writes, never truly lost her South Carolina roots, where Michelle had visited a few times. Michelle describes loving and hating the South because it is so different from what she knows. But she also has an innate understanding that the South is a part of her heritage—a “deep familiarity that sat atop a deeper and uglier legacy.” Michelle and Craig visit Aunt Sis a few times a year for dinner on the other side of Princeton, grateful for the hearty South Carolina meal.
Though Michelle acknowledges how the legacy of slavery has affected her older family members in previous chapters, this is the first time that Michelle addresses how she feels it is intertwines with her own life and history. Michelle understands the importance of recognizing one’s history in order to be able to progress and grow from it.
Themes
Michelle recounts up a memory: during her sophomore year, she and her boyfriend Kevin, who is a football player, go driving together on a warm, clear day. Kevin stops near an open field with straw-like grass. He suggests they run through the field together, and they dash from one side to the other, shouting cheerfully like children. It is a small memory, but Michelle acknowledges that it stays with her because the moment allowed her to shed her very serious agenda of trying to check every box for success.
Bringing up this memory is important, particularly as it pertains to the next few chapters, because it demonstrates how infrequently Michelle lets go of her seriousness and quest for success and actually allows herself to feel happy and passionate.
Themes
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Kevin is much less serious than Michelle. He graduates at the end of Michelle’s sophomore year, and sets out to be a mascot for the Cleveland Browns. In the end, Michelle says, he ultimately becomes a doctor, but at the time Michelle seriously judges him for this abrupt decision to do something that she sees as unserious. Michelle, on the other hand, is already thinking about law school, viewing it as a practical way to spend time and make money. Even though Michelle is “burned-out” by school, she views herself as the smart, analytical type of person who could quickly become a successful lawyer.
Michelle’s judgment of Kevin is not unlike her judgment of Suzanne. Unlike the two of them, Michelle puts the desire for traditional “success” over her desire to do something that she loves or feels passionate about. Kevin, on the other hand, actively pursues something that will make him happy, even if he eventually chooses to do something else. In many ways, Michelle takes the opposite path: going for the corporate job before finding the thing that she loves.
Themes
Michelle decides to attend Harvard Law School; she’s not truly passionate about the work, but it provides her with validation and the certainty of future rewards. After Michelle graduates from law school, she gets a job in a high-end law firm in Chicago named Sidley & Austin. She makes more money than her parents ever have, and feels as though she’s “climbed the mountain.” She doesn’t start to question her path until she volunteers to mentor an incoming summer associate, whom she doesn’t know much about other than the fact that he is also black, also goes to Harvard, and has an unusual name.
Putting herself on the path to law school sets Michelle onto a track that she does not move from for many years, until she ultimately realizes that this isn’t what she wanted in the first place. At the same time, even though this job might not have made her happy, it leads her to some of the most rewarding parts of her life: the jobs that come after, marrying Barack, and thus ultimately ending up as First Lady of the United States. Thus, it is not that the steps along the way were not worth it—instead, they allowed Michelle to grow and “become” something that she never thought she would be.
Themes
