Community, Investment, and Hard Work Theme Analysis

The early chapters of Michelle Obama’s memoir track her trajectory from middle-class kid from the South Side of Chicago to graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School. On the surface, Michelle’s story appears to tout the age-old narrative that hard work is the key ingredient to success. And while Michelle did work hard, she acknowledges that there were many other factors involved in her accomplishments. Throughout the memoir, Michelle demonstrates the value of a supportive community and people (particularly family and teachers) who cared about her and were invested in her success. She argues that these factors are just as important as hard work, and that without them, even smart kids who work hard can get left in the dust.

Michelle describes how, from an early age, her desire to work hard was positively reinforced by her family. Michelle learns piano from her great-aunt Robbie, who values hard work and sets high standards for her, demanding that she play one song perfectly before moving on to the next. This support taught Michelle to work doggedly at each goal in front of her before tackling an even bigger challenge. Similarly, Michelle’s mother teaches her to read at an early age and sets her up for success in grade school. For example, her mother pulls her out of an unruly second grade class and moves her up to a bright, well-ordered third grade class. This kind of parental investment and care is what enables Michelle to feel like her hard work will ultimately pay off and lead people to invest in her further. Michelle’s parents also pay for her brother, Craig, to go to a good high school, while Michelle luckily places into a good magnet school that costs nothing called Whitney Young. The assumption at the school is that everyone is working toward college, which allows Michelle to feel like she can be smart without being criticized for it. This kind of supportive community again allows Michelle to flourish and inspires her to work hard. Craig and Michelle both aim to go to college, and their parents constantly tell them not to worry about paying their way through school, instead wanting them to focus on their studies and getting the best education that they can. Thus, not only emotional investment, but also financial investment goes a long way to helping kids to achieve success. By lifting the burden of finances and providing their children with emotional support and encouragement, Craig and Michelle’s parents enable them both to attend and graduate from Princeton University. Thus, Michelle makes it clear that it wasn’t just her own hard work that caused her early successes; her family and community were crucial factors too.

At Princeton, Michelle continues to rely on support from others who aid her growth. She often feels like an outsider as one of the only black female students, but then she finds the Third World Center (TWC)—“a poorly named but well-intentioned offshoot of the university with a mission to support students of color.” It becomes a home base for her, where she makes several “instant friends” who give her more of a sense of belonging. School requires an extra level of confidence and effort for students who don’t like they belong, and this community allows Michelle to feel that she deserves to be there. Michelle takes a work-study job at the TWC, and her boss, Czerny Brasuell, becomes an important mentor for her and an investor in her success as well. This mentorship makes Michelle even more invested in her own success, because she sees that someone else believes in her.

But Michelle acknowledges throughout that not everyone is afforded the same opportunity to be surrounded by positive mentors and loving family members. Bryn Mawr, Michelle’s secondary school, is deemed a “run-down slum” by a newspaper, and she often wonders what happened to the children in the second-grade class whose mothers did not pull them out. Michelle recognizes that systems of poverty and institutionalized racism can quickly catch up with children who don’t have the same resources she did, no matter how hard those children work. She notes that kids understand these dynamics early on: “I realize that kids know at a very young age when they’re being devalued, when adults aren’t invested enough to help them learn. Their anger over it can manifest itself as unruliness. It’s hardly their fault. They aren’t ‘bad kids.’ They’re just trying to survive bad circumstances.” Thus, Michelle argues that without the proper circumstances—a community or parents that are able to invest in and support them—hard work is much less likely to lead to the same kinds of success that Michelle herself has found.

Michelle believes so strongly in the power of community investment that as First Lady, she actively works to invest in children around the country and the world. For example, Michelle visits a school in Chicago on the South Side, where she grew up. The students feel that no one cares about them, and most of the time they’re less focused on their schoolwork and more focused on staying alive and avoiding gang violence. She invites them to the White House to visit with her and Barack and to visit Howard University—with both trips sponsored by local business people—in order to show them that people do care about them. Michelle organizes these visits because she knows that having a supportive community can enable these kids to escape bad circumstances. Michelle acknowledges, however, that such visits aren’t enough—her hope is to eventually help all students feel like they are being valued. Ultimately, she concludes that only the unwavering support of family, teachers, and mentors can inspire children to work hard and overcome adversity.