Barack Obama: Dreams from my father (2008, Canongate)
442 pages
English language
Published April 7, 2008 by Canongate.
In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father, a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man, has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey, first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother's family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father's life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance.
I miss my President, even if he ended up as a caricature of himself at the end.
Written before his name became a household word, this is Barack Obama's struggle to connect with his distant father and an extended family he never knew. It's an honest look at a man driven to do the right thing, clearly curious to learn how far the apple fell from the tree.
Originally published in 1995, this was written by a Barack Obama who was not yet in the senate, who had no idea he would one day hope to be president. It's not written as a politician but as a young law student still figuring out who he is. The death of a father he barely knew leads him to explore his family's history and roots in Kenya as he tries to understand what motivated his father to come to America and then leave again, as well as pondering some of the serious problems that still (and perhaps increasingly) face black youth in today's America.
In Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention supporting Hillary Clinton, he claimed that Hillary was the most qualified candidate ever to run for president. While that may be true in terms of political experience close to the white house, I think that the experiences Obama …
Originally published in 1995, this was written by a Barack Obama who was not yet in the senate, who had no idea he would one day hope to be president. It's not written as a politician but as a young law student still figuring out who he is. The death of a father he barely knew leads him to explore his family's history and roots in Kenya as he tries to understand what motivated his father to come to America and then leave again, as well as pondering some of the serious problems that still (and perhaps increasingly) face black youth in today's America.
In Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention supporting Hillary Clinton, he claimed that Hillary was the most qualified candidate ever to run for president. While that may be true in terms of political experience close to the white house, I think that the experiences Obama describes as a community organizer working with poor and underprivileged communities in Chicago probably qualify him far better than any other recent presidential candidates to be a true representative of the people of America.
Obama's search for his family history and attempts to understand how he fits into the world and what he believes in also raises sad awareness of the fact that many black families in America have been entirely cut off from the ability to answer the same questions for themselves. He didn't directly make this point but it seemed clear to me that the complete severing of family history and traditions due to slavery have left so many Americans without that sense of belonging and foundation that help them find themselves, particularly when young. Even Obama clearly struggled with these questions, and he was lucky enough to be able to find the answers through his family in Kenya; many will never be that lucky.
If you pick up the audio book from Audible, it's an updated edition that adds a new introduction and ending, still prior to his election as President but written when he was an elected senator. It's also read by Obama himself, which I found completely fascinating as well as somewhat offputting, because previously I'd only heard his presidential speeches. Listening to him read this book I realized that when he's being less formal he has much different pronunciation than in a formal speech, and it often sounded as if he was slurring his words slightly, which is not something you ever hear in his speeches. (He also speaks with different accents extremely well, when speaking as the various different characters in his book.)
Overall a very interesting background of a fascinating and very intelligent man, and probably a far more honest and open biography than you'd ever get of a "career politician" who'd always be writing with future ambitions in mind.
Marking this as a DNF for me, not because it's bad but because I got bored. I made it halfway through, to the point where he finally learned how to be a successful community organizer and while I'm mildly interested in his travels to Kenya, I don't think I'm interested enough to pick this back up.
I read this book as part of my presidential election research. I voted for Barack, so you can tell I liked it.
