Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
Book Review: Not a campaign booklet, but a frank personal insight
Summary: 5 Stars
It is a rare privilege to have such a personal insight into the life and background of a prominent politician. Often it is written about leaders that nobody knows what they are really like as people. But in Barack Obama's case, it is laid out in quite frank detail in this book.Like most people outside Illinois, I had not heard of Barack Obama until he gave his speech at the Democratic Convention on 27 July (it can be read on his website: www.obamaforillinois.com), and I was fortunate to find the last copy of his book in a Chicago bookshop in August. The opening of the convention speech is a brief outline of the background that formed the book. His father was a Kenyan who went to study in Hawaii, and his mother was living in Hawaii having grown up in Kansas. They parted company soon after Barack was born.
The book is about his childhood and how he adapted to life after his father left his mother. She remarried an Indonesian man, and they went with him to live in Indonesia for some years. Barack returned to the US to finish high school. After graduating, he went to work in Chicago among underprivileged black communities there before deciding to go to law school in Harvard.
Obama's style of writing is extremely personal and analytical of how he dealt with certain issues in his life - his absent father, the colour of his skin, the remarriage of his mother, how he learnt of his father's death, his work in Chicago, his decision to become a lawyer and his rediscovery of his roots in Kenya (including his grandmother, uncles and aunts, and various half-brothers and sisters). Despite having led a very different life in a different part of the world, I was regularly struck by similarities between his life and mine - and can only assume that every reader would have the same reaction.
On a slightly critical note, the book is written at times in quite a fictionalised style that took some time to get used to. It cannot really be believed that Obama remembered every word and pause in quite so many conversation (not to mention what he saw through the window during the many pauses in conversation).
That aside, this is a great book which appears not to have been written with an eye on a political career (future Republican opponents will doubtless make great play out of a small, passing reference to drug use). It was first published in 1995 when Obama was fresh out of law school, commissioned as a result of his having been the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review. Even if his political star were to fade without the widely tipped shot at the 2012 presidency, I would recommend anybody to read his book.
Book Review: Insightful
Summary: 5 Stars
Greatly insightful, and a wonderful memoir style of novel like that of NIGHTMARES ECHO and RUNNING WITH SCISSORS, Well worth the time to read. One day will be a classic. He argues with himself and the book is a politically based book, but I found it extremely interesting.Book Review: Inspiring
Summary: 5 Stars
In Barack Obama's "Dreams from My Father" I discovered a fascinating brain and an accepting mind that came to terms with his dual inheritance. He provided us with an insight of the African-American experience, of the hopes and dreams of the people, of the realities they confronted and of their failures.In his inspiring appearance at the Democratic convention, Obama emerges as a rising star in the American politically scene, a figure with a strong personality that is easy to relate to. The speech was very moving.
The fact that this book was written before Obama gained so much political popularity, is the reason why it is so authentic, unlike many of the autobiographies we read. And as a mulatto, this book reminded me of Disciples of Fortune. It is so amazing how the heroes in these books came to terms with their inheritances.
Book Review: A classic
Summary: 5 Stars
Dreams from My Father is a greatly inspiring memoir. Controversial, though it is, the story reflects the soul of a man who is open to his identity. In this book, Obama argues with himself and comes to terms with his identity. You will not regret getting into the pages of this page turner that bear the hallmarks of a classic. It is a recommendable read.Also liked , The Color of Water, The usurper and Others
Book Review: The pursuit of happiness
Summary: 5 Stars
Barack Obama was of an interracial marriage. Most of us remember, until 1967, many children in interracial marriages, like those in gay households today, were deprived of equal rights under the laws. Yet, few recall that Albino Luciani (later to become John Paul I) led the same struggle in Italy.
As a bishop, in Jan 1965, he told the Italian Parliament, "We are speaking here of the pursuit of happiness - the inalienable right of free men to grow up and fall in love with whomever God deems one fall in love with, together with the sacred duty to provide for the economic and loving support of children so that they too can enjoy the pursuit of happiness. . . Marriage is a God-given individual right and cannot be infringed upon by the majority. The state cannot tell its citizens who they can or cannot marry less we cease to be a free society. . ." I got that out of the only existing biography of the 33 day pope, Lucien Gregoire's 'Murder in the Vatican; The Revolutionary Life of John Paul'. In the same session, Luciani won the right for single persons, including homosexuals, to adopt children to help care for Italy's huge orphan population.
Like Luciani, Obama is a man of towering eloquence, and it is that which will eventually bring him to the top. In the short run, his writings and his deeds will pave the way. Yet, it is his heritage, perhaps, more than anything else that makes him understanding of the true meaning of democracy, "Democracy which finds its strength in rule by the people, can only realize its purpose, its sacred duty to society, in preserving the basic human rights of its loneliest individual." (Albino Luciani, Christian Democratic Party Convention, August 1963).