Becoming: Chapter 13 Summary & Analysis

Michelle is nervous in her new job as the executive director for the Chicago chapter of a company called Public Allies. Public Allies recruits young people and gives them intensive training and mentorship before placing them in apprentice positions in community organizations and public agencies. The hope is that it will give the young recruits—the Allies—the experience and drive to continue working in the public sector.

When Michelle was offered the job, the salary was far below what she had been paid at city hall, and she literally could not afford to accept it. She starts to realize that for the people who work at non-profits like this one, often their virtue is “discreetly underwritten by privilege.” Michelle, on the other hand, can’t “be shy or embarrassed about [her] needs,” and when she expresses those needs, the organization is able to secure new funding.

Michelle works tirelessly to set up an office and hire a small staff to support the new Allies. She also speaks with every connection Barack has to find donors and people who can support the program, including those who can host an Ally in their organization. For Michelle, the most exciting part is finding the Allies: visiting college campuses, community colleges, and urban high schools.

Quickly, Michelle recruits twenty-seven Allies. Michelle hosts development workshops and helps the Allies sort through any issues they might be having at their new positions. She celebrates their progress and when they’re late or not taking their work seriously, she lets them know she expects better. Over Michelle’s several years in the job, she is amazed to see how many people have remained in the non-profit world, and that Public Allies is still going strong. She feels that the work is truly meaningful.

Barack, meanwhile, finds his own purpose. He teaches a class on racism and the law at the University of Chicago Law School and works during the day at his law firm. He is also writing the second draft of his book. Dreams from My Father is published in the summer of 1995. It gets good reviews but sells only modestly. Still, it allows Barack to come to a kind of peace with his own scattered identity.

In Chicago, political chatter starts to kick up. A sitting U.S. Congressman is under investigation for sex crimes, and a state senator named Alice Palmer intends to run, leaving her own seat vacant. Barack asks Michelle what she thinks about his running for the seat. She writes that, as with every time he asks her this question, the answer is largely the same. She doesn’t appreciate politicians and doesn’t love the idea of Barack becoming one, thinking that he is too good of a person to get muddled in politics.

Michelle doesn’t want to dissuade Barack from his belief that he enact change, however, so she gives her approval. Barack is elected to the Illinois state senate in November 1996, though during the campaign, tragedy struck. Barack’s mother Ann died quite unexpectedly, and his inability to say goodbye to her had “crushed him.” Michelle describes how Ann had introduced him to “the richness of literature and the power of a well-reasoned argument.”

After Barack is elected, every Monday through Thursday he stays at a hotel in Springfield before returning for the weekend and having a date night with Michelle on Friday. Michelle sees this as “a golden time” for the balance in their marriage, when they both are pursuing their own interests and sense of purpose.

Barack is an eager state senator, quickly introducing many new bills that get picked off by the Republican-controlled chamber. Still, Michelle sees that he is “strangely suited to the tussle of lawmaking.” He remains hopeful that some part of his vision will manage to win out.

As Barack gets accustomed to politics, Michelle takes a new job at the University Chicago, where Art Sussman is looking for an associate dean to focus on community relations. Having grown up on the South Side, Michelle knows that it is important work to try to make the university more accessible to the neighborhood and vice versa.

In addition to the sense of purpose Michelle gets from the job, there are also more practical reasons to take it: better pay, more reasonable hours, and good health-care benefits. This will prove particularly important, because Michelle and Barack are trying to get pregnant, and it isn’t going well.

As months go on and Michelle and Barack are unable to get pregnant, they try to make adjustments in their schedules to optimize their chances. But nothing seems to work. They have one pregnancy test come back positive, but Michelle has a miscarriage shortly after. She comments on the fact that many women have miscarriages, but there is so much silence around the issue because it can feel like a personal failure—which, she assures readers, it is not.

Michelle and Barack see a fertility doctor, who says he cannot discern any biological issues. He then recommends in vitro fertilization, which Michelle largely undergoes alone because of Barack’s schedule. Michelle is frustrated, feeling “the acute burden of being female.” Barack only has to provide some sperm, but Michelle has to go in to the doctor for daily ultrasounds, blood drawings, and cervix inspections. They both want a family, but it is Michelle who will have to put her passions and career on hold. Still, she knows, this is the sacrifice that is required to get something else that she desperately wants: children.

Eight weeks later, Michelle becomes pregnant. All resentment Michelle felt is gone, and she even feels that pregnancy is a privilege: “the gift of being female.” She and Barack are both bright with optimism and promise for the baby that she is carrying. Michelle has baby Malia on July 4, 1998.