Becoming: Chapter 23 Summary & Analysis

Each day, month, and year in the White House is “packed,” to the point where Michelle often finds it difficult to process in hindsight how she might visit several states in a day, or speak to twelve thousand people, or do jumping jacks with kids during the day only to put on a ballgown in the evening.

As Barack’s reelection year nears, Michelle continues to put pressure on herself not to rest. She’s “haunted” by the way she’s been criticized and works to counteract those criticisms. She rehearses her speeches again and again. She makes sure that her events run smoothly and on time. She continues to grow the reach of Let’s Move! and Joining Forces.

Michelle knows that the months of campaigning leading up to the election will be extra difficult. The summer of 2011 is “especially bruising” for Barack. A group of congressional Republicans refuses to raise the debt ceiling (a relatively routine process) until he makes a series of cuts to programs like Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare. Meanwhile, the economy has grown, but not fully recovered—for which many people blame Barack.

As the summer begins, Michelle flies to South Africa with Sasha and Malia. She meets health workers, tours the Apartheid museum, and is introduced to Desmond Tutu. The most surreal moment, however, is when Nelson Mandela invites them to his home. He is ninety-two at the time and had been hospitalized earlier that year with lung issues. 

To Michelle, there is no one else alive who has had a more meaningful impact on the world than Mandela, who boldly challenged the all-white South African government. Mandela spent 27 years in prison for his activism and was 71 when he was released, only to then transition the country to a true democracy and become its first president. Michelle is honored to interact with a man who has so deeply inspired his country and the world. She flies home “propelled by that spirit” of tolerance and resilience and optimism. He is a lesson that progress happens slowly.

Barack proposes three bills over the fall of 2011 to create thousands of jobs for Americans by giving states money to hire more teachers and first responders. Republicans block them each time. Senator Mitch McConnell declared to a reporter a year earlier that “the single most important thing [they] want to achieve [...] is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Michelle finds this “demoralizing” and “infuriating.”

Despite this opposition, there is a lot to feel hopeful about. By the end of 2011, American soldiers have left Iraq and are gradually leaving Afghanistan. The Affordable Care Act has largely gone into effect. Michelle and Barack also return to the campaign trail, excited to speak with supporters as a kind of “salve” for the frustrations in Washington.

Michelle continues to do work for Let’s Move! As a result, the company behind Olive Garden and Red Lobster pledges to revamp its menus to be healthier. Michelle is also learning how to connect her message to her image, doing an on-air push-up contest with Ellen DeGeneres to raise awareness about Let’s Move! She sits down with influential “mommy bloggers” and finds ways to harness new social media tools.

On Election Day, November 6, 2012, Michelle is nervous that their time and effort might not have been enough. This election in particular feels “more fraught than any other,” seeming to her like a referendum on Barack’s political performance, the state of the country, and on his character. Michelle deliberately doesn’t watch the news that night, and just as she starts to panic, Barack finds her and tells her that they’ve won. Barack wins among young people, minorities, and women. His win means four more years of being symbols for the nation, responding to whatever comes at the country.

Five weeks later, a gunman walks into Sandy Hook Elementary school, shooting and killing twenty first-graders and six educators. As the news unfolds, Barack asks for Michelle to come to the Oval Office—the only time in eight years he’s request her presence in the middle of a workday. They huddle silently together in sadness, Barack already briefed on the “graphic, horrid crime scene” at Sandy Hook. She knows, however, that their grief is nothing compared to the parents of the children who have died.

Barack briefs the nation on what has happened, wiping away tears as he does so. He understands that there is “no solace to be had,” and that the best he can offer is his resolve to prevent more massacres by passing sensible gun control laws. For Michelle, though she has consoled many people in her four years as First Lady, she is so shaken that she cannot go to the vigil being held for the victims. Instead, she clings to her own children—the day of the vigil Sasha is performing in The Nutcracker, and Michelle is grateful to be able to watch her.

Michelle acknowledges that America is not a simple place, and the outcome of its stories are not always positive. Barack’s second Inauguration Day comes and goes. Later, Michelle wishes that she could have caught sight of one person in particular at the inaugural parade—a young black girl named Hadiya Pendleton who was in the marching band of a school from the South Side. Eight days after the inauguration, Hadiya is shot and killed in a public park in Chicago, mistaken for a gang member.

Michelle attends to Hadiya’s funeral, hoping that she can “turn the gaze towards the many innocent kids being gunned down in city streets almost every day,” and that this incident, coupled with Newtown, might prompt Americans to demand reasonable gun laws. Hadiya was fifteen, an honor student, and liked to tell people that she wanted to go to Harvard. Michelle acknowledges that she could have been Hadiya once, and that Hadiya could have been her. Instead, Hadiya was the thirty-sixth person in Chicago killed by gun violence that year—and it was only January 29.

It is important to Michelle not only to be a consoler, but to try to build relationships with the people she meets, especially those who do not have access to her privilege. She keeps up her relationships with the girls from the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School in London, bringing a group of them to visit Oxford and hosting a few of them at the White House. She starts a new initiative called Reach Higher, encouraging kids to get to and stay in college.

An economist from a British university later puts out a study that finding that the test performances of the students at the school jumped significantly after Michelle started to connect with them. She insists that the credit for that improvement belongs to the girls, but this also affirms the idea that “kids will invest more when they feel they’re being invested in.”

After Hadiya’s funeral, she directs her chief of staff Tina to rally support for gun violence prevention in Chicago. She works with Chicago business leaders, philanthropists, and mayor Rahm Emanuel to expand community programs for at-risk youth across the city. Her efforts yield 33 million dollars in pledges in a few weeks, and this prompts Michelle to return to the city.

Michelle meets students from Harper Senior High School, a school on the South Side. In the previous year, twenty-nine of the school’s current and recent students were shot, eight fatally. Urban schools are dealing with “epidemic levels of gun violence.” The students are eager to talk to her, describing a fear of gangs and violence, and some have absent or addicted parents. Nearly every kid there has lost someone they know to a bullet.

One student asks Michelle, quite candidly, what she can do about the issue. Michelle acknowledges that Congress seems adamant about not raising the taxes required to fund an education investment, and that, even after Newtown, Congress seems determined to block measures that could help keep guns out of the wrong hands, as many representatives receive campaign funds from the National Rifle Association.

Instead, Michelle tells the students, they should use the education they are getting to their advantage. Their stories already show they have persistence and self-reliance. Their school is filled with committed and caring adults who want to see them to succeed. And six weeks later, thanks to donations from local businesspeople, a group of these students will visit the White House and spend time at Howard University, hopefully giving them a glimpse of a path to success.