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Malia Obama
Michelle’s dad, named Fraser Robinson III. Michelle’s father had been diagnosed in his thirties with multiple sclerosis, but throughout his life he largely ignores his declining health. Instead, he works hard at a filtration plant in order to make sure that Michelle and Craig can get a quality education. Michelle admires his fortitude, but also tries to get him to see a doctor when it becomes clear that he is having trouble walking. After this development, he is quickly hospitalized, and passes away from a heart attack due to complications from M.S. when Michelle is twenty-seven years old.
Michelle’s father Quotes in Becoming
The Becoming quotes below are all either spoken by Michelle’s father or refer to Michelle’s father. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 1 Quotes
The issue was that I wasn’t used to flawless. In fact, I’d never once in my life encountered it. My experience of the piano came entirely from Robbie’s […] less-than-perfect upright, with its honky-tonk patchwork of yellowed keys and its conveniently chipped middle C. To me, that’s what a piano was—the same way my neighborhood was my neighborhood, my dad was my dad, my life was my life. It was all I knew.
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Chapter 2 Quotes
He’d been promptly picked up by a police officer who accused him of stealing it, unwilling to accept that a young black boy would have come across a new bike in an honest way. (The officer, an African American man himself, ultimately got a brutal tongue-lashing from my mother, who made him apologize to Craig.) What had happened, my parents told us, was unjust but also unfortunately common. The color of our skin made us vulnerable. It was a thing we’d always have to navigate.
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Chapter 10 Quotes
“I’m just not fulfilled,” I said.
I see now how this must have come across to my mother, who was then in the ninth year of a job she’d taken primarily so she could help finance my college education, after years of not having a job so that she’d be free to sew my school clothes, cook my meals, and do laundry for my dad, who for the sake of our family spent eight hours a day watching gauges on a boiler at the filtration plant.
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Michelle’s father Character Timeline in Becoming
The timeline below shows where the character Michelle’s father appears in Becoming. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
...the piano fill Michelle’s bedroom and the living room, the only respite coming when her father turns on the Cubs game on TV. Michelle writes that America is “in the midst...
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...Her family is “the center of everything.” Michelle’s mother teaches her to read early; her father teaches her and her older brother Craig to love jazz and art. Michelle and Craig...
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...in turn, is stubborn, and asks why she can’t learn new songs. Michelle’s mother and father are amused by her feud with Robbie. Michelle explains that they usually don’t intervene in...
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...Robbie holds a “fancy recital” for her students at a nice rehearsal hall, and Michelle’s father drives her there. Michelle writes about her father’s devotion to his car, which he calls...
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Chapter 2
Michelle’s mother and father treat Michelle and Craig very maturely, almost like adults. As they grow, they speak about...
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Sometimes Michelle’s father would drive around a nicer area to the south called Pill Hill; Michelle thinks this...
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...like pizza as a reward for good grades, or hand-packed ice cream. Each July, Michelle’s father takes a week off from his job tending boilers and they go to a resort...
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But at the end of the day, Michelle’s father finds that someone had keyed a gash across the side of his car, and Michelle’s...
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Chapter 3
...starts to run evacuation drills with the rest of the family. He practices hauling Michelle’s father over to the stairwell, knowing that his father probably wouldn’t be able to run or...
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Michelle’s father’s family, on the other hand, lives throughout the wider Chicago area. On Sunday afternoons, Michelle’s...
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Chapter 4
...granted, but years later, her mother explains that every spring, she thought about leaving Michelle’s father. Michelle understands, as an adult, that marriage can be difficult and it is “best renewed...
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Chapter 5
...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...
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Chapter 6
When Michelle arrives at Princeton, she is accompanied by her father and her boyfriend, David. She is excited and fully ready to leave her hometown behind,...
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About once a week, Michelle calls home and tells her mother and father every detail of what’s happening at school. They, in turn, talk about their own lives—that...
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Chapter 8
...she saves money by living in the apartment where she grew up. Her mother and father moved down into Robbie and Terry’s old space after Robbie passed away and left her...
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Chapter 10
...focus on the aspects of her work she finds most meaningful. Meanwhile, at home, her father’s feet have inexplicably started to swell, though he insists as always that he’s fine. She...
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Michelle’s father continues to avoid the doctor over the coming months. He takes particular pride in never...
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The next morning, Michelle’s father gets up for work yet again. He makes it out the door, but when Michelle...
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Before Michelle can make her father’s doctor appointment, he is rushed to the hospital. The doctors tell him that his endocrine...
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Chapter 11
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...
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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...
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Chapter 12
...both Hawaii and Kenya. The mood is joyful, although Michelle feels the loss of her father. At the church, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright speaks about what it means to form a...
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Chapter 17
...gives a seventeen minute speech in front of twenty thousand people. She speaks of her father, her family, and Barack’s “noble heart.” When she finishes, people applaud and applaud, and she...
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