Summary: Becoming: Michelle Obama

By Quick Savant

This is a synopsis, not a replacement, and serves as a study aid. The following is about Michelle Obama's book, Becoming.

An intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WATCH THE EMMY-NOMINATED NETFLIX ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • NAACP IMAGE AWARD WINNER • ONE OF ESSENCE’S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS

In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America—the first African American to serve in that role—she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare.
In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it—in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations—and whose story inspires us to do the same.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Quick Savant
• Release date: Jun 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005737078

Quick Savant

Quick Savant represents a team of independent researchers and authors dedicated to timely and efficient learning.

Book preview

Notes from Quick Savant

Becoming, published by Crown Books, by Michelle Obama,became the best selling book in the United States for 2018. Sales set a record with over two million copies within the first 15 days.

By March 26, 2019, Becoming sold over 10 million copies. As of November 2020, over 14 million copies circulated worldwide, including 8 million in Canada and the United States. One million found themselves given away to youth.

Becoming becomes the perfect book for a summary: popular, insightful, trending, and revealing.

Additional interesting tidbits of information, added by the author, appear in parentheses.

Preface to Becoming

Michelle lists her accomplishments and her trials and tribulations from being the First Lady. At times, some called her the most powerful woman in the world. Michelle dealt with media jabs, some scathing verbal assaults, and even accusations about her true biological gender. One sitting Congressman owned enough audacity to comment on the plus-size of her behind.

Her mother, Marian, taught Michelle how to think for herself and speak up. Arguing seemed to come naturally for Michelle, who often just had to have things her way, and this trait propelled her into a brief career as an attorney.

Michelle views her story as offering value in the larger story of tension and strife between races and working to establish equal rights and opportunities for all.

Becoming Me

1

Michelle lives as a child in a small bedroom-like partition upstairs in a two story brick house in the South Side of Chicago. Her maternal great aunt, Robbie, teaches piano downstairs, providing a constant backdrop of less-than-perfect renditions of the same pieces over and over again. When she aged a bit, Michelle, too, would take lessons from unabashed disciplinarian Robbie, who happened to be very set in her ways, but also remarkably effective as a music teacher.

Michelle loved to play by herself with her family and community of dolls, spending hours to create a make-believe world, the daily operations of which only she knew intimately.

At this time in Michelle's life, the tail end of the turbulent sixties, the Kennedy brothers and MLK fell to assassinations. At Grant Park, during the Democratic National Convention, an ugly and bloody melee arose between the police and Vietnam war protesters.

Michelle recalls that, attracted by better schools, more space, and more of what she calls Whiteness, White families migrated out of Chicago in large numbers. Blacks from the South, and other more rural locations, migrated to the big cities for jobs and opportunities.

Her father, always calm and laid-back, worked at the