The title of the book is “Dreams of My Father” written by Barack Obama, the former President of the United States. This is an autobiography written by Obama before he was elected President. In the introduction included in this new edition of the book, Obama communicates to the reader that he wrote this when he was just elected Senate, and that he gained publicity from book publishing companies after he became the first African-American editor of the Harvard Law Review. I chose this book because I want Canadians to see how their support for the United States seems to waver depending on who their leader is (Obama vs Trump), when really, the American people have always been the same. We need to keep our feelings about the American people (or Russians, or Chinese) separate from our feelings about their government. I’ll begin with a summary, and then an analysis and recommendation.
Summary
The main thesis of the book is his exploration of identity and race growing up mixed-race but without knowing his African side of the family (but later, identifying more with black culture in America). In the introduction, he describes this book as “a boy’s search for his father…” and “search[ing] a workable meaning for his life as a black American” (xvi). I call it an autobiography, but he doesn’t because he thinks that an autobiography “promises feats worthy of record, conversations with famous people, a central role in important events“, which demonstrates how humble he is when he claims: “there is none of that here” (xvi).
He talks about his childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia, and then being a young man moving to New York and Chicago. Later on, the Obama at the end of the book is most similar to the one we are familiar with. It’s fitting that it’s near end of his journey to being a man is when he takes the most difficult step of traveling to Kenya (where his father was born) after his father was killed in a car accident. He has met his father only once, when he was ten years old, and mourns of a relationship they never had. He founds comfort and solace in Kenya, and feels that the ghost of his father is all around him- on the streets of Kenya and beyond.
Obama shares anecdotes about his father, but notes that they are all secondary accounts from other people: his grandparents, old family friends, and his mother. They share more happy-go-lucky accounts of him, whereas Obama seems to harbour resentment: he views his father as a selfish man who chose a scholarship to Harvard over supporting his young family in Hawaii, leaving his mother behind to raise Obama as a single mother. I think other people have a well-rounded view of his father because they have various experiences of the good times and the bad, whereas for him, his father is a ghost, somebody else’s memory. In addition to broken family ties, the race factor complicates things because he was raised in a white world with a white family, but he feels like he belongs to the African-American community, and did not have family member to teach him the values, culture, and language from a distinct heritage.
Analysis
In terms of his writing style- it is similar to the famous speech he gave before he was elected as President. The younger Barack Obama uses more imagery and angst-y writing with seemingly no direction. Very abstract, emotional, as the older version of himself writes in the introductory, a bit dramatic too at times. What is really interesting about this book is comparing it to the introduction- the readers get a glimpse of the younger Obama before he became a grey-haired (former) president that we now know him as. Even his writing style changes too; his introduction (as a thirty-three year old married lawyer in Chicago) is different than the younger Barack who gave the finishing touches of the book.
Because his life was complicated- his mother remarrying, the family moving to Indonesia, him returning to Hawaii and being raised by his grandparents- I appreciated how he separated the book into informal chapters by location, such as “Chicago” or “Kenya” to indicate different periods of time. Although the book was complicated in that sense (because his life was unstable and complicated), I found the book easy to read and follow.
“Well… there was a woman in New York that I loved. She was white. She had dark hair, and specks of green in her eyes… We saw each other for almost a year. On the weekends, mostly. Sometimes in her apartment, sometimes in mine.”
P. 210, “Dreams from My Father”
My favourite part of the book is when I was surprised. We know of Barack Obama as a serious and popular politician, and had a glimpse of his childhood pictures he shared during his election campaign. However, we do not know about his teenager and young adult years, when he smoked pot, was dismissive of his grandparents, and had a year-long casual relationship with young woman from a posh background. This is the most beautiful passage in his book in my opinion, about his visit to her parent’s country home:
“… one weekend she invited me to her family’s country house. The parents were there, and they were very nice, very gracious. It was autumn, beautiful, with woods all around us, and we paddled a canoe across this round, icy lake full of small gold leaves that collected along the shore.”
p. 210 , “Dreams from My Father”
“The library was filled with old books and pictures of the grandfather with famous people he had known- presidents, diplomats, industrialists. There was tremendous gravity to the room. Standing in that room, I realized that our two worlds, my friend’s and mine, were as distant from each other a Kenya is from Germany. And if we stayed together I’d eventually live in hers.”
p. 211, “Dreams from My Father”
After meeting her parents, he realized he didn’t want to enter that posh world of legacies and inheritance, and instead became a community organizer for Chicago’s black community. Note that he refers to her as a friend-not a girlfriend- even though they saw each other for year, spent time in each other’s apartments. Note that he doesn’t even give her a name in the book, though he names other people in their lives and protects their identity by giving them a pseudonym. This is the Obama I did not know, and one I’m glad he grew out of.
Ironically, he did go back into that world with Harvard law school, though it seems like he was never searching for money, power or fame. Interestingly, his father also went to Harvard for a PhD in economics, which is the reason why he left Barack and his mother when he was a baby. This book shows that it is not a straight path towards success, as well as how resilient and courageous Obama is to serve the low-income black community in Chicago, and later on, the entire country when he is elected as President.
Recommendation
I would recommend this book to anyone of all ages and backgrounds if they are interested in reading about Obama before he was elected President. He seems to me that he was just as kind and humble in the past as he is now. Despite his difficult past and unstable childhood, he strives to be the parent his father never was, and overall seems like a compassionate human being.
Hope you enjoyed this, and talk to you soon,
Guest
