91 pages • 3 hours read
Michelle ObamaBecoming
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
The Importance of One’s Own Story
In the Preface of the memoir, Michelle first introduces the idea of the importance of telling one’s own story, rather than allowing others to speak for you. Michelle explains, “Your story is what you have, what you will always have. It is something to own” (x). This statement explains Michelle’s desire to write her memoir and speak about her time in the White House for herself, rather than relying on others to comment on the decisions she made and the way she fulfilled her role as the First Lady of the United States. Michelle first came to understand the importance of speaking for herself when she was helping Barack campaign for the presidential election in 2008. At the time, Michelle had little experience with politics, and she had no idea how to cope with the kind of international attention that she was suddenly receiving.
Commentators picked apart her facial expressions, her clothing, her height, her career choices, and everything in between: “It was as if there were some cartoon version of me out there wreaking havoc […] a too-tall, too-forceful, ready-to-emasculate Godzilla of a political wife named Michelle Obama” (264). Though Michelle is tempted to step out of the limelight, she instead harnesses the power of her 
