Becoming: Chapter 12 Summary & Analysis

Michelle and Barack marry in the summer of 1992, surrounded by their families—Michelle’s from the South Side, and Barack’s from 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 union and have it witnessed by a caring community. At that moment, Michelle is struck by the fact that “whatever [is] out there,” they “would step into it together.”

Michelle and Barack take a honeymoon in northern California. They are more than ready to take a vacation: Barack had put his job at the law firm and his book on hold to work as a part of an organization called Project VOTE, which made efforts to register new voters in states with low minority turnout. Barack took a job running the Illinois office, and he threw himself into the work. He spent a lot of time speaking with community groups and unregistered voters in  order to convey that there is power in voting.

Michelle, meanwhile, has been fully steeped in government. She says that government issues are “elaborate and unending.” She has been meeting with department heads and city commissioners, and she follows up on personal complaints received by the mayor, like fallen trees and garbage collection.

Michelle has been closely watching Valerie Jarrett and another co-worker at city hall, Susan Sher, who are “women who knew their own voices and were unafraid to use them.” They are also, importantly, working moms. Michelle observes that they never hesitate to prioritize their family when necessary.

Michelle and Barack return from California to good news and bad. The good news is the result of the November elections: Bill Clinton won overwhelmingly in Illinois, and Carol Moseley Braun became the first African American woman to hold a Senate seat. Project Vote had registered 110,000 new voters, and for the first time in a decade, over half a million black voters in Chicago went to the polls. All of this is heartening for Barack.

The bad news is that Barack has completely missed his book deadline, the publisher has canceled his contract, and Barack now has to pay back his 40,000 dollar advance. Instead of panicking, Barack resolves to finish the book and sell it to a different publisher. He plans to spend a few months alone writing the book—in a cabin his mother Ann finds for him, on the Indonesian island of Bali. Six weeks after their wedding, Barack heads off to the cabin, while Michelle remains home. She explains that all she can do in the face of this development is learn to adapt.

Michelle writes about the word “wife,” which feels loaded to her. It represents an idea of a white woman who lived inside the television sitcoms Michelle watched growing up, women who rarely had lives outside of the domestic sphere. She acknowledges, however, that her parents’ dynamic was just as traditional. Michelle preferred The Mary Tyler Moore Show growing up. Mary was independent and funny, and had conversations that weren’t about children or homemaking. Michelle, likewise, has been raised to “be confident and see no limits.” And so she wants to have a work life and a home life, but “with some promise that one would never fully squelch the other.”

Barack returns home with a basically finished book and sells the manuscript to a new publisher within months. Quickly, he and Michelle return to their easy rhythm. The months go by—they live and work and laugh and plan together, buying a condo in the spring. Michelle switches jobs once more to explore nonprofit work. There is a lot she hasn’t yet figured out about her life, but for the time being, she is happy.