Michelle Obama (born Michelle Robinson) grows up on the South Side of Chicago, in a neighborhood slowly being deserted by white and wealthy families. Michelle’s family (which includes her mother, her father, and her older brother Craig) is a very tight-knit, middle-class family living together in a small apartment upstairs from her great-aunt Robbie and her great-uncle Terry. Despite the fact that Michelle’s family is not very affluent, she has a happy childhood—largely due to the sacrifices and investment of her family and the adults around her. She learns piano from Robbie, her mother teaches her to read early, and she works hard to get a good education.
Michelle’s childhood is not without its hiccups and challenges, however. When she attends a piano recital, she realizes that she has only ever played on one with broken keys. Her father has multiple sclerosis and his body is slowly deteriorating, despite the fact that he insists he feels fine. And once, when Michelle and her family visit some family friends in a predominantly white neighborhood, they return to their car and find that someone has keyed a deep gash into it.
Still, Michelle doesn’t let these challenges get her down. She works hard in school, and despite a guidance counselor’s doubts, she gets into Princeton (following her brother). At the Third World Center at Princeton (a student center for minority students), she finds friends and mentors that make her feel more at home in a place she describes as “extremely white and very male.” One such friend is Suzanne Alele, who is very different from Michelle in that she prioritizes fun over more pragmatic choices.
Michelle graduates magma cum laude with a degree in sociology, but she doesn’t stop to truly consider what makes her passionate. Instead, she dives right into Harvard Law School, knowing that it will give her a degree of validation and certainty about what her future might look like. After law school, she moves back to Chicago to join a firm called Sidley & Austin. A year into working at Sidley, Michelle agrees to mentor an incoming summer associate. She is assigned Barack Obama, an African American man who is three years older than she is and has already gained a reputation as an exceptional law student (after finishing only his first year at Harvard). She and Barack quickly strike up a friendship, and she notes his intense optimism, his diligence, and also his humility. She is also intrigued by the fact that he seems more concerned with a broader “potential for mobility” than his own wealth. They begin to date just before Barack returns to Harvard.
Over the next two years, as Barack finishes up law school, Michelle starts to feel dissatisfied in her job, knowing she’s not passionate about it. Michelle also experiences two losses: the loss of her friend Suzanne to cancer, and the loss of her father. Her father dies of a heart attack just after finally agreeing to make a doctor’s appointment. Michelle is heartbroken; these losses prompt her to understand that life is precious and she cannot waste any more time in a job that she doesn’t enjoy.
Michelle leaves Sidley & Austin to begin what will become a series of jobs. First, she takes a job at city hall. Though she is skeptical of politics, she is excited by the opportunity to actually improve people’s lives. Meanwhile, Barack graduates from law school and moves back to Chicago. On the day he takes the bar exam, he proposes to Michelle, and she says yes. Michelle and Barack marry in the summer of 1992, then take a honeymoon in Northern California. When they return, Bill Clinton wins the presidency and Carol Mosely Braun (the first African American woman to hold a U.S. Senate seat) wins her race as well. Barack has missed a deadline to turn in a book manuscript, and so he decides to hole up in a cabin in Indonesia for six months to work on it while Michelle remains in Chicago.
Michelle and Barack go through a series of changes: she takes a job at a company called Public Allies, which recruits young people and places them in non-for-profit companies in the hopes that they will stay in that line of work. Barack wins a seat in the Illinois Senate; his mother Ann passes away. Michelle then moves on to a job at the University of Chicago, as an associate dean focusing on community relations. This job’s health benefits are particularly important to Michelle, as she and Barack are trying (unsuccessfully) to get pregnant. After months of failed attempts and a miscarriage, Michelle and Barack decide to try in vitro fertilization, and their daughter Malia is born via this method in 1998. Michelle has a difficult time adjusting to the schedule of being a mom and also having a part-time job. Barack, too, experiences some of the sacrifices of parenting: when they are on vacation in Hawaii, Malia falls ill and Barack is forced to miss a crime bill vote because they cannot fly home while she is sick. He loses a Congressional race as a result of missing the vote.
In 2001, Barack and Michelle have another girl, Sasha. Michelle debates whether to go back to work, but she interviews for a job with the University of Chicago Medical Center (again working on community outreach) and brings Sasha along, making her need for a competitive salary as well as a flexible schedule clear. She is hired. Still, even with the ability to afford childcare, Michelle grows frustrated with Barack’s absence—he is away every Monday through Thursday. The two go to couple’s counseling together and identify ways to make their schedules more compatible.
Michelle is happy at her new job, finding ways to improve how the hospital interacts with the local community and how community members seek treatment and get health care. Barack, meanwhile, decides to run for the U.S. Senate. He gets a few lucky breaks along the way: both the Democratic frontrunner and the Republican nominee are embroiled in scandals, and Barack is also selected by presidential nominee John Kerry as the keynote speaker for the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He gives a rousing seventeen-minute speech demonstrating how he is the embodiment of the American dream, calling for hope, progress, and unity among the American people. He becomes an instant sensation and wins his Senate race with 70 percent of the vote.
After two years in the Senate, Barack thinks about running for President. Michelle, who can already see her own identity slipping away in support of Barack’s, is hesitant, but she agrees, knowing that he could help millions of people. Along the campaign trail, Michelle and Barack face extra scrutiny because of their race. People often make racist comments about Barack and Michelle, and Michelle also faces a great deal of sexism when people speak about her “emasculating” Barack by being such a strong woman.
As Barack and Michelle campaign heavily in Iowa, Malia’s pediatrician tells Michelle that Malia’s body mass index is creeping up. Michelle hires a young man named Sam Kass to cook healthy meals for the family, and Michelle starts to become passionate about children’s health and nutrition. She and Sam discuss the possibility of planting a garden at the White House and starting a children’s health initiative if Barack wins.
After months of hard campaigning, Barack wins the Democratic nomination (beating Hillary Clinton), and ultimately wins the presidency against Republican John McCain. This sets off a whirlwind of changes in the Obamas’ lives. They move to Washington and into the White House; they all receive dedicated Secret Service agents and a heavy security detail; they experience the luxury of a full-time staff catering to their needs.
Barack and Michelle waste no time: Barack is focused on rescuing a failing economy, while Michelle begins a series of initiatives in the White House. The first is planting a garden alongside Sam Kass, which helps spark her children’s health initiative, called Let’s Move! She gets large chain companies to promise to cut the salt, fat, and sugar in the meals they market to children, works with schools to provide healthier lunches, and gets networks like Disney and NBC to run PSAs during kids’ programs about the importance of physical activity.
Michelle knows that all of her decisions will face some kind of backlash: from women who believe she is giving up her education and career to become a domestic housewife; to those who believe she is too involved in policy; to those who simply focus on her fashion. Michelle knows, too, that as the first black First Lady, she is not perceived to have the “presumed grace” of other First Ladies.
Over the course of Barack’s two terms as President, both Michelle and Barack accomplish a lot. Barack is able to pass the Affordable Care Act, his signature domestic achievement. He starts to pull America out of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and American forces are able to kill Osama bin Laden. Barack rescues the economy. Michelle accomplishes a lot of her goals with Let’s Move! and also works on other initiatives like Joining Forces (which focuses on supporting military families), Reach Higher (which helps kids get to and stay in college) and Let Girls Learn (which supports girls’ education worldwide).
Still, there are many instances in which Barack and Michelle aren’t able to achieve all of their goals, and they feel the weight and responsibility of caring for a grieving nation. When a gunman kills twenty first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Connecticut, Barack knows there is no solace to be had, but resolves to fight for common sense gun control laws. Yet despite more and more instances of gun violence and school shootings, Congress does not budge.
As Barack’s presidency draws to a close, the next election kicks up. Michelle helps campaign for Hillary Clinton, particularly because she is disgusted by the racist and misogynistic comments that Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, makes. When Donald Trump eventually wins, Michelle is disheartened, worrying that so much of the progress that has been made in the last eight years might be undone. Still, as her family transitions out of the White House, she retains her optimism. No one person, she says, can reverse all progress.
Michelle concludes by affirming that she is “an ordinary person who found herself on an extraordinary journey.” She reflects on all of the ways that she and the country have changed over her lifetime. Neither she nor the country is perfect, but continuing to grow, and owning one’s own unique story, is what “becoming” ultimately means to her.
