Becoming Michelle Obama

AMERICANA E-Journal VOLUME XIV, NUMBER 2, FALL 2018, 2018

interests include late 19th-century proto-modern fiction, conversions of literary modernism and postmodernism, popular fiction genres, contemporary multicultural American fiction, theories of narrative, and methods of American Studies. Her current research into travel writing involves re-mapping travel texts by Edith Wharton. She has published two books, The Function of the Imagination in the Writings of Henry James (Mellen, Abstract: Michelle Obama's Becoming has become the best known memoir by an ex-First Lady ever. Traditional as the First Lady's role and the First Lady's memoir genre are, Becoming has shifted the terms through which to define both. Instead of the insider's story about the public husband by the domestic wife it represents the basic American story of a self-made strong woman invested in the life of the community. This paper reads Becoming and charts its statements about finding one's voice, opting to work for the community, and choosing hope over despair as not so much a personal but rather as a communal story of a not so well definable group. To get a better glimpse of the actual appeal of the story, the paper investigates where this project comes from, what its modes of existence are, how it is circulated, what subject positions it determines. Becoming can be read as political commentary in the sense of antebellum autobiographical slave narratives that had aimed to trigger political change by personal testimony. Another intertextual influence can be African American women's fiction and autobiography where the theme of finding one's voice in the context of double oppression is vital. The story defines the subject position of an 'empowered' black feminine subject. Michelle Obama's Becoming represents an ultimate dream: the story of a working class African American girl who becomes the rst lady of the US. Although the book develops a special American rags to riches plot, the story covers not only the journey of becoming the First Lady, but also that of becoming a person with a voice and a project. In Becoming this project means a focus on change on many levels. I argue that 'change' in the text has both personal and political implications: I want to focus on how the personal and political senses of the term are represented in the autobiographical narrative. In order to look into the

When Michelle Obama was first introduced to the American public in 2008, she was depicted in the media as an unpatriotic, stereotypical, angry Black woman. Today, she is more popular than the president. This study examines the narrative about Michelle Obama created by the first lady and the White House through YouTube videos uploaded in an attempt to redefine her in ways that are more acceptable to the public. The authors examine that narrative in videos posted by the White House, mainstream news and entertainment outlets, and allied organizations, with a focus on the intersectionality of gender, race and class in her story. The findings indicate that Obama’s story reflects a neoliberal narrative framed by two themes: (a) the American Dream is achievable through education, hard work, and perseverance; and (b) motherhood and family are primary. Within this neoliberal narrative, racism and poverty are obstacles to be overcome through making the right choices, and gender is viewed through the narrow lens of motherhood rather than gendered inequalities. This narrative is both shaped and constrained by Obama’s race, class background, and gender, as well as the goal of creating a more acceptable public persona.

Politics & Gender

When they go low, we go high"-Michelle Obama, 2016 Democratic National Convention Heralded by some as the "forever first lady," Michelle Obama represents myriad things for Americans in the era of Donald Trump. For some, she is the epitome of grace, elegance, and courage. For others, Michelle Obama is an angry black woman who hates America. How can one woman embody different reactions from Americans? One simple response would be the intense partisan nature of contemporary politics. However, a deeper analysis would reveal that an intersectional approach is necessary to understand how Michelle Obama is perceived by Americans as well as how she sees herself. Her legacy is complicated, and therefore it requires political scientists to untangle the messy roles of race, class, gender, motherhood, presidential politics, public opinion, and (black) feminism in their analysis of Michelle Obama. This special issue of Politics & Gender undertakes such an analysis. Within these pages, authors pay particular attention to the intersectional intricacies that have marked Michelle Obama's years in the White House and beyond. To set the stage for this issue, this introduction provides some context to Michelle Obama and why she is a worthwhile subject for political analysis and discussion. The unelected position of first lady has evolved over the years to become one of leadership and decision-making (Scharrer and Bissell 2000). As an institution, the role of the first lady is based on accumulated precedents and audience perceptions, and it is dependent on elite and popular expectations (Wekkin 2000). Furthermore, the first ladyship wields a form of soft power that is significant for conveying policy preferences, international affairs, and public opinion (Zhang 2017). How the first lady's identity is constructed is instrumental in how she is able to leverage this soft power. As the first black first lady, Michelle Obama's

An Unprecedented Election: Media, Communication, and the Electorate in the 2016 Campaign , 2018

We suggest that understanding Michelle Obama’s evolving rhetoric about the American Dream requires a close analysis of her convention addresses in 2008, 2012, and 2016. When examined as a set, we argue that these speeches highlight Obama’s use of measured rhetoric to transcend the duality inherent in the American Dream myth. We contend that Obama successfully synthesized the materialistic myth and the moralistic myth of the American Dream by interlinking the value of individualism with the value of collective responsibility. We illustrate how she honed this message over time by outlining commitments to traditional family structure and promoting the dominant, materialistic myth of the American Dream, and later by using her adopted voice of “Republican mother” to frequently incorporate narratives about her children that served as metonyms for the protection of all vulnerable people in society.

In this autobiographical essay, I discuss why I became a Michelle Obama scholar and what I've learned while investigating Mrs. Obama as a case study of the growing literature on Black female bodies.

2020

When one internalizes the truth that nothing is beyond the politics of hegemony, the counterhegemoinic discourse exists as strategic essentialism. As such, the influence of hegemonic discourses as represented by the dominant group gets transferred to the dominated mass inferior group. Derogatory terms towards racial minorities, to the African-Americans in particular, have been internationalized with generalization. Michelle Obama’s 2018 autobiography Becoming unearths such deep-rooted dynamics of dehumanization of minorities persisting in her country where racism enclosed with patriarchy is still dominant in newer forms in everyday life. Indifferent to politics in her early phase of life, she gradually gets metamorphosed into an activist intellectual. She stands along with some critics to defend that America did not enter into the ‘postracial era’ even after Barack Obama served the White House as the President for two terms. She looks in search of ‘organic’ intellectuals who assume ...

2018

share five goals: encourage healthy pregnancies and early childhood, empower parents and caregivers to make healthy choices, provide healthy food in schools, improve access to healthy affordable foods in communities, and increase physical activity. This chapter analyzes Let's Move! literature, Michelle Obama's speeches and writing, media coverage of the initiative and Task Force reports to assess the initiative's success in meeting these goals.

2020

Mythological representations have always symbolically embodied human beings' ancestral fears and wishes. Yet today the reading of the languages of new myths can convey the key to an understanding of the historical period we are living in. Nowadays one of the most popular cultural icons is Michelle Obama. First Afro-American FLOTUS, Michelle is still serving as a highly influential role-model, whose recently published autobiography, Becoming, is a record best-selling book. By drawing on the theoretical approach of Appraisal Framework (Martin and White 2007), I intend to investigate how her 'becoming Michelle' was accomplished. The AF explores the way language is used to evaluate and/or adopt stances and to construe textual personas, and how affective involvement can be conveyed through a set of indicators. Accordingly, qualitative examples are analysed to show how, in Michelle's autobiography, the lexico-grammar options are significant in the process of the shaping of her status of a modern cultural icon.

In Aleksandra Izgarjan, Dubravka Duric, Sabina Halupka-Resetar, eds. Aspects of Transnationality in American Literature and American English. Novi Sad: University of Novi Sad, 2020. 277-298., 2020

The article discusses the role of the photo illustrations in the performance of racial visibility in Michelle Obama's autobi.ography. In African American autobiographies, illustrations were traditionally used to authenticate the story of social ascent and make racialized bodies visible. The article argues that parallel to the book's main narrative of finding one's voice and becoming audible, the illustrations perform the project of changing the female African American narrator's social visibility for the American gaze from a stereotypical racially biased version to a more personalized one closely connected to issues of education and self-help. The article claims that if the story of finding one's voice in the book is read along with the narrative on visibility the pictures tell, then the racial politics of book cannot be so easily criticized as some of its early reviews would suggest.