Becoming is a 2018 memoir written by former US First Lady Michelle Obama. It chronicles her life, starting from her childhood in Chicago to her experiences in the White House. It is separated in three parts: Becoming Me, Becoming Us and Becoming More. The book does not have a specific setting; instead, it is set in various locations which are connected to the memoir’s main events.

Becoming Me is mostly set in Chicago. Thus, the first important location is Michelle’s family home and later on, her apartment in South Shore, which is a small community located in the south side of Chicago. Then, when she tells the readers about her education, the story takes place in Bryn Mawr Elementary and Whitney Young High School. The story is also set at Princeton University and the Pyne Hall dormitory in Princeton, New Jersey, as well as in Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After her studies, Michelle comes back to Chicago to work at the Sidley Austin law firm. Becoming Us, which focuses on her relationship with her husband Barack Obama, is also set mainly in Chicago; however, there are some events of the story that take place in Springfield, Illinois. Finally, Becoming More, which chronicles her experiences as the 44th First Lady of the United States, is mostly set in The White House, in Washington, DC.

Michelle Obama's life started "in the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago, in a tidy brick bungalow." She says she had a strong family that included her parents and her brother Craig. Her aunt and uncle also lived in the same house, and her grandparents and cousins lived within a five-block radius.

It was a lively working-class neighborhood, and she describes how she and her brother used to fall asleep to the sound of adult league softball games at the nearby public park. They also lived in a modernist apartment in Parkway Gardens and in an apartment on Euclid Avenue where she slept in the living room with her brother.

Michelle then attended Whitney Young High School in North West Side Chicago.

Both Michelle and her brother Craig attended Princeton University. Michelle enrolled in the university in 1981 and says she lived in "a-room triple in Pyne Hall." Princeton was an eye-opener because she says it was "extremely white and very male."

After graduating from Princeton, Michelle studied law at Harvard before returning to Chicago to work at the Sidley and Austin law firm where she met her husband and future president Barack Obama.

After stints working at the city hall and for an organization called Public Allies, which she describes as a "start-up inside a start-up," she became associate dean at the University of Chicago.

It was during her time at the university that Barrack decided to run for president.