Rhetorical devices

Anecdote

One of the main devices that Michelle Obama uses in the preface to Becoming is anecdotes. Anecdotes are interesting personal experiences or events that have happened to the author and are often intended to make readers laugh or focus on specific messages A memoir is usually made up of a series of anecdotes that the person writing considers relevant to their current life.

Michelle Obama concludes the preface with an anecdote about her life after leaving the White House. Here, Obama talks about the sudden realization that she is now able to prepare food without the staff in the White House offering do it for her:

I opened a cabinet and got out a plate. I know it’s a weird thing to say, but to take a plate from a shelf in the kitchen without anyone first insisting that they get it for me, to stand by myself watching bread turn brown in the toaster, feels as close to a return to my old life as I’ve come. (ll. 75-78)

Here, the anecdote is intended to amuse readers, but also to help them understand Obama’s new identity and how she fee...