Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama (1995)
Dreams from My Father was published long before Barack Obama began his run to become President of the United States. I don’t generally read books by political figures; however, a friend lent me this book. It sat on my shelf for some months before I decided to pick it up and give it a go.
The book tells us very little of his early life. Although he has said publically that his mother was in influence in his life, she is virtually absent in this book. He was born in Hawaii, but lived in Indonesia as a young boy, before being shipped off to Hawaii again to live with his grandparents. The picture he paints of his maternal grandparents is not the one he spoke of during his presidential campaign. The focus of this book, of course, is his search for his father’s side of his history.
As a school boy in Hawaii, Obama encountered few other black classmates and he began to feel the “differentness” of being black. He attended college on the mainland and while a student, turned to books by such writers as Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright. He struggles with his racial identity, where he is unable to fit in with the white students, yet must prove himself to the black students.
Following college, Obama decided to become a community organizer. He was hired by a white Jew, with whom he seemed to have a tenuous working relationship. He went into a rough project community to try to arouse interest in getting its residents involved in making improvements. He was frequently frustrated by the lack of apparent involvement by the residents, but he persevered. In the course of this work, he is told to become a member of a church, any church, in order to gain credibility. That began his relationship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Obama describes the first sermon he hears the Reverend Wright give. That sermon was entitled “The Audacity of Hope.” From the description, it appears to have been much the same rhetoric that was discussed during the President’s campaign.
Change was the theme of his presidential campaign. Change was also a theme of his early working career. He tried to effectuate change as he worked in the projects of Chicago as a community organizer. His efforts are truly admirable and consistent. Still, while working there, he feels like an outsider ~ a young man looking for his place in the world.
The main theme of Dreams from My Father, is, as the title suggests, Obama’s quest to learn about his absent father. Obama met his father only once, long when he was about 10 years old. His memory created a fantasy, and ideal man, so that 11 years later, when Obama was 21 and learned that his father was dead, he had no sense of loss.
Finally, Obama decides to travel to Kenya to meet his father’s complicated, tangled and extended family. His father had been married several times and had several children. At least two of his wives, including Barack Obama’s mother, were white Americans. All the children, except Barack, lived and grew up in Kenya.
Obama discusses the issues of race and class, as it is played out in Kenya and America. He also analyzes race in terms of human psychology that manifests itself in the prejudices towards one another.
President Obama is a very articulate speaker. He is also a good writer. He is good with words. This book conveys his quest to find his place in the world, first by finding his past through his missing parent(s) and then by helping change the plight of those less fortunate than him. Perhaps it was his sense of loneliness and need to fit in that lead him on his path to the White House.
Read: April 19, 2010
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