Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance | Barack Obama

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance | Barack Obama | In search of identity

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Dreams from My Fat...

	Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance Barack Obama Three Rivers Press, 2004 - 480 pages average customer review:based on 298 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

I won't vote for him, but I vote for this true-life story.

Every voter should read this book, because everyone should know who it is they are voting for or against. What defines this candidate? Not merely a set of position papers. In my case, I am voting against Senator Obama. That does not make his book any less valuable and compelling. Now more than ever I know why I am making another choice.

Some of Obama's musings in between the strictly narrative sections can be a bit ponderous. The scenes of his life, as described in this book, are full of detail, highly readable, novel-like. As such, they strike me as having been embellished, because only a man with photographic memory could accurately remember conversations and thoughts and feelings in such detail. However, I'll give Obama the benefit of the doubt that these scenes are truthfully described according to his overall memory. And frankly, I doubt the book would be as readable if such fine details were not included, whether they are strictly accurate to the letter or not.

I see a parallel between Obama's life history and his political philosophy. Obama longed to know his absent father. Obama looks to government as more than "Uncle Sam." Government is to be Daddy to us all. Progressives may sympathize with this view, and libertarians/conservatives will recoil from it. Nevertheless, Obama's early "community organizer" days are well-covered in this book, and from the start Obama looked upon government as a solution to nearly every problem (housing, schooling, jobs, health, etc.). It is unclear to me what evidence leads Obama to believe this can ever truly lift poor minorities out of their miseries, when it seems so clear that character and lifestyle choices can undermine any gifts or advantages the government may bestow on poor communities. And that without families -- read intact families with present, functional fathers -- most poor children will never reach their full potential, unlike Mr. Obama.

Also, it is clear from the description of Barack's first service in Jeremiah Wright's church in chapter 14 that Barack was fully aware of the reverend's "blame the white man" tendencies from the start. Those tendencies may not have been addressed then in the offensive manner that ultimately got so much media attention, but the die was plainly cast. Did Wright really bring Obama literally to tears with that first sermon? I believe he may have, as described in the book.

There's no way any of us can really walk in Obama's shoes, but this book is the next best thing. Barack describes an inside view of what it was like to grow up black in American society, yet also feeling an outsider because of his multinational, multiracial origins and upbringing. It is good for all of us, of all political persuasions, to understand those kinds of struggles, and to honor Senator Obama for all he has overcome, and for his intentions to try to change things for the better.

How the reader ultimately views Obama's methods for achieving such change will depend a lot on the philosophical premises he or she brings to the reading. Still, this book is an effective tool for understanding the origin of candidate Obama's personal ambitions and his politics, whether you like them or not. Further, it serves as a sore reminder of the mental and emotional plague that is inflicted on children when their fathers are distant or completely missing in action. If only all men could understand that before they become fathers!

Barack Obama is a rich man now. For writing this book, he deserves to be. There are lessons for all of us here.

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In search of identity

This book has been written with great literary flair. Every place in which Barack Obama has lived or which he has visited is described with the skill of a great travel-writer; every person, every social setting is graphically and memorably brought to life. His independently-minded maternal grandparents, white folk who had themselves eloped against the wishes of the grandmother's father, had no theory about racial equality but simply assumed it and were shocked when their surroundings did not. Apart from the fact that the grandfather had itchy feet, that may have been one of the reasons why they left Texas and moved to Hawaii, which was more racially tolerant than mainland America. When their daughter married Barack senior, a black Kenyan whom she had met at the University of Hawaii, they accepted him. It was a brief marriage: he left his wife and his brown-skinned two-year-old son, Barack junior, to study in America, and never returned to live with them. Two years later she married an Indonesian (another superb pen-portrait), and when Barack was six years old, they all went off to live in a village on the edge of Djakarta. Barack learnt a lot from his step-father and from life in Indonesia under a savage right-wing dictatorship. He also learnt much from his mother, who counteracted the step-father's fatalistic acceptance of the situation in Indonesia by constantly setting before her son the struggles of the American liberals in the 1960s and 1970s. Her second marriage, too, would end in divorce. She sent Barack back to Hawaii when he was ten, to be educated at a good American school there.

Even in Hawaii where there was more racial mixing than anywhere else in the United States, there were many incidents which taught the adolescent Barack that he was a black person in essentially a white man's world, and there was one incident in which he found that even his beloved grandmother was afraid of a black beggar when she would not have been of a white one. It was a shattering discovery for a youngster whose mother and grandparents were white: to which world did he really belong? He was still confused and angry at college in Los Angeles; and then he realized that he was going in for self-dramatization (and, to some extent, I feel he had not fully overcome it in this book). There was no need for him to be trapped in that kind of drama - some of his more mature black fellow-students taught him that. His identity was surely something more than was defined above all by his race.

But that was easier said than found, or perhaps even really wanted at that time. He wanted to identify himself with a community, and initially this was a black community. So in 1983, at the age of 22, he joined a community organization in Chicago, and the second part of the book is about his time there. Things had started looking up for black people in that city. They were immensely proud of the election of the first black mayor, Harold Washington; anti-discrimination laws in the public sector had enabled some blacks to move to the more prosperous areas of the city (only to find that the whites were moving out); but in run-down districts like Altgeld there was still a huge pool of hopelessness. Some alienated youngsters had created their own gun-culture, and it was uphill and disheartening work for Barack and the community leaders to get people to come together to do something to help themselves, and also to pressure the authorities. After a year's hard work there were some small successes to celebrate (each movingly narrated), and each bringing in new participants, and also set-backs - which lost some of them again.

For some of Barack's colleagues, total rejection of white society was the only way in which black `self-respect' could express itself. Barack understood the psychological need for this; but - not only because of his own background - felt that self-respect cannot be based simply on what was essentially a generalized hatred for and separation from a society in which blacks were enmeshed with whites in a thousand practical and inescapable ways.

After three years as a Community Organizer, Barack thought he could be of more use to the black community if he took time off to train as a lawyer. He won a place at the Harvard Law School; but before he took it up, he paid his first visit to Kenya in 1987; and the account of that visit takes up the third part of this book. In America he had already met a half-sister with whom he established an instant rapport (a most touching account, that), and now he met the rest of his very extended and complicated family (Barack Senior had fathered eight children from four different women), with all their rivalries and resentments, but also with their warmth. From the third wife of his grandfather he learnt the whole story of his Kenyan family. If he had visited Kenya in search of roots, his perplexities and self-questioning did not diminish - but that aspect is not the only one in this vivid account of his visit to the country.

The book is a reflection of a sensitive and thoughtful man of mixed race in America. In 1995, when it was first published and Barack Obama was 33 years old, he still seemed very uncertain of who he was, was focussed on the problems of the black community in the United States and then on his Kenyan heritage. Today he seems very confident and sure of his identity, campaigning for the Presidency on a programme that transcends any question of race. In more ways than one, he has come a long way.

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Great book written by a true American

I bought this book on the recommendation of a client, more out of curiosity than anything, and wow! I was pleasantly surprised to find this amazing and very moving book, written with such eloquence, so heartfelt and quintessentially AMERICAN. What makes this book even more poignant and relevant is that is that it was not an election-year hack-job designed to win votes, but it was written more than a decade ago, at a time when no one could have imagined that this man would be the Democratic nominee for President in 2008. This is a man I would (will?!) be proud to call Mr. President. Political leanings aside, this is just a great read. Highly recommended.

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Opened My Eyes
by M.S.Ellis Sykesville MD

I am a 63 year old mother of four. I started reading this book because my youngest daughter urged me t.o. Also I voted for Hillary in the primary and wanted to know more about the man who beat her. I was by turns touched frightened fascinated and healed. Even though I am a white woman his story reminded me of my own experience with disenfranchisement guilt and purposelessness. In critiquing his writing I must say he managed the right mix of storytelling and reflection like my favorite books of meditations. In fact I may use the book in that way once I figure out some of th Kindle highlighting and footnote features.
Many of his stories struck a chord. His mothers words are words Ive heard from my own parents and used on my own children. His reckless escapades recall my own childhood and my childrens. His feelings about white power structures remind me of arguments with black friends in the sixties. I thought I got it then but now thanks to this book I know I did not. I thank the author for sharing his painful journey from cynicism and near despair to understanding and hope. I am next going to read how he plans to turn his hopes for our ailing society and economy into reality. I recommend this book to anyone of any race or culture who seeks to understand a difficult or absent parent.

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