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: Amazon Pulled My First Review...I'll Try Again...
Summary: 2 Stars
I wrote a hasty review and spoke my true feelings about Barack Hussein Obama's memoir of self-discovery. Amazon refused to publish it probably because I said what I think: this book proves him to be a racist.
However, I won't reproduce my work, rather, I will leave you with this following warning: Mein Kaumph was Adolf Hitler's assessment of what needed to be done. Dreams of my Father is Barack H. Obama's warning to the world. He is no Martin Luther King. Think Malcom X, and you get the idea. Peace out.
Book Review: Elliston's Invisible Man for the 21st century
Summary: 5 Stars
When I watch shows like the McLaughlin Group (and the American Media in general), I'm struck by how little the literary stockjobbers actually know about Senator Obama. Worse yet, I'm appalled at the perceptions that are as put forth as fact. On the other hand, I'm convinced that Obama is a new type of politician, of equal stature with Washington, Lincoln, and both Roosevelts. If you don't vote for this guy, your loss.Book Review: A terrific book!
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a terrific book; a great story written in beautiful prose. It sheds light on the inner strife and conflicts that Barack Obama faced growing up as a black person in America. Obama wrote this book when he wasn't in the limelight, so there is an element of openness and candidness that makes the story very appealing. Obama's strength of character, charisma and ability to generate hope prevail in these pages; and these are the very same traits that have contributed to his astounding success in the presidential race. I could never fully comprehend why Obama is usually termed as a 'uniter'; this memoir proves that Obama has an ability to transcend barriers of race, class and religion.Book Review: INCREDIBLY UNIQUE STORY - MOVING AND INSIGHTFUL
Summary: 4 Stars
Barack Obama must be the only person on the planet with a background like this: son of a free-spirited young woman who married a black student from Kenya while living in Hawaii with her parents, her father a World War II veteran seeking his fortune as a salesman and her mother a career woman who did not want to be called "Grandma." The family had come to Hawaii because Gramps (he didn't mind being called that) asked for a transfer when he learned the furniture company he worked for was opening a store there. And so their daughter happened to meet the first Barack Obama who happened to have gotten a scholarship to study at the University of Hawaii. It was not clear that their marriage was ever legal, as we learn later in the book that the senior Barack already had a wife in Kenya. The union did not last, but it left a legacy - a son, the young Barack Obama who tells us his story, a moving account of his journey toward reconciling the two parts of himself.
Clearly, he loved his mother, and she never stopped loving him or wanting the best for him, even while her idyllic dreams faded as the enigmatic Kenyan left her to study at Harvard, then go back to his other women in Kenya. She married an Indonesian student and took young Barack to live in Indomesia, where he learned to play with other kids of various shades of brown, and struggled with the poverty and corruption that seemed to permeate life there. Finally, his mother decided he had to go back to his grandparents in Hawaii, to better schools and better opportunities. Gramps called in all his favors and was able to get young Barack into the best school on the island. The author tells us that this first experience with affirmative action had nothing to do with being black. It had everything to do with grandparents who loved their grandson.
His life with the grandparents who made him a priority in their lives defined a happy childhood. While the racial difference did not infect their family life, at times it still intruded. He relates the story of a man hassling his grandmother as she waited for a bus, and the shock he felt when Gramps tells him that the man who frightened Toot was black. This bothered Gramps, but he was right away sorry he had told his grandson. Full of contradictory feelings about his own racial identity, Obama goes to see an old black poet who Gramps liked to hang out with. The man explained (in his own poetic way) that a white man can be comfortable with a black man, come over and fall asleep in his house and be buddies, but, said the old black poet, the white man can never understand what it really feels like to be black, and that "your grandma's right to be scared... she understands that black people have a reason to hate." The chapter concludes with the words "and I knew for the first time that I was utterly alone."
In his aloneness, he goes to college in California, then moves to New York. He matter-of-factly tells us that the person who offered him a place to stay was not in his apartment when, suitcase in hand, fresh off the subway, he showed up and rang the doorbell. With no place to stay and not enough money for a hotel, the future Senator (future President?) SLEPT IN AN ALLEY! I was astounded to read this, and thought of my own daughter, who also went off with just a few bags and not much money to find her future in the Big Apple. I hope she never slept in an alley.
Unsatisfied with a professional suit-and-tie job, Obama gets it in his head that he wants to be a community organizer. He sends out resumes, he quits the good job, he goes down to his last dollar before taking a job offered by a scruffy white guy to work in some tough neighborhoods of Chicago.
His experiences with the poor people of Chicago are poignant and related with an honesty and refreshing lack of boasting. No, he didn't wipe out poverty and racism, and some of his efforts fell flat, but he learned a lot about himself as well as what life is like for poor people who feel powerless. And he had a few successes.
It's hard to say whether the first part of the book, with all those early experiences, was the best part, or the last part where he takes us along on his trip to Kenya, to try to reclaim the elusive father he never really knew. He has met his father only once, back in Hawaii at the fancy school where the other kids, learning his father was African, asked if his father ate people, and young Barack makes up stories to hide his feelings about not knowing his own father. And he endures the tortured worry when his father is invited to speak to the school children about Africa, and savors the vindication and relief when the kids actually enjoy the black man's tales about the faraway place called Kenya. His father teaches him to dance, then disappears from his life, except for a now and then letter.
The book shifts quickly into the Kenyan story, a little too abruptly. But I was soon lost in the tale of all the family, trying to keep straight who was related to who and how. It must have been a bit like that too for the author, who found his lost family in many ways not as he thought they'd be, but in other ways more wonderful than he expected. He traced the path his grandfather Onyango had taken, from Luo tribesman to wearing the white man's clothes and learning their ways. But the English colonialists left, and Jomo Kenyatta, of the Kikuyu tribe, led the country as the senior Barack, son of Onyango, returned with his Harvard education, to help build a country. He did not build any wealth for his family, as the author tells us of modest houses, shared beds, traveling by rickedy bus, and using outhouses. I loved the account of going on a safari and his description of the animals. His sister Auma did not want to go ("safaris are for the white tourists") and his insistance ("You're letting your prejudices keep you from enjoying your own country"). He shows love and concern for all his African family (an incredible collection of half-brothers and sisters with mutiple mothers), but Auma has a special place in his heart. She came to see him in America and had lived and studied in Germany. She too had some of the same ambivalence about heritage. No male chauvinist Luo ways for her!
The last chapters are also an abrupt shift. We fast-forward through the rest of Obama's life to the time he wrote the book. It's as if he wanted to tell us more, but ran out of space and just summarized the rest. I'm sure there is so much more to tell, and who knows if the years ahead will yield up an even more incredible story than this? Barack Obama seems to have finally laid to rest the ghost of his father and found his own authentic self. We are the richer that he chose to share his journey with us.
Book Review: The Amazing Honest Journey of America's NEXT President
Summary: 5 Stars
I found it interesting to read Barack's amazing book on the new amazon kindle. A new politics is what Obama preaches-a new e-reader is what I was consuming it on. All in all-a very modern experience. I was deeply moved by this story-an honest personal account of Obama's coming to grips with his very identity. Once you have read this it should be no surprise as to why Barack has become such a beloved, inspirational and influential figure on the American (soon global) political stage. He cares. He listens. He owns up to his mistakes. He thinks. He feels. He has a rare vision and patience we all could benefit from. This story is heartbreaking at times as we follow a disoriented young Obama from Hawaii with his mixed racial parents and grandparents to the bleakest, most hopeless areas of urban Chicago. It is amid this hopelessness that Barack finds himself and proves that "Yes, we can!" is much more than an empty slogan; it is a call to action-a profound way of looking at life. His bottom up grass roots organizing is real, and if every person who will soon cast a vote in the upcoming election read this book-I think Obama would win the election unanimously. Obama is an impressive writer with a strong modern style. His old school blend of "take responsibility" mixed with compassion galore and a keen unique insight into the petty jealousies and racial stereotyping and prejudices serve him well. His inner conflict of being multi racial is such a tremendous metaphor for modern American society. An inspirational true story from a man who is destined to become a HUGE influence on modern times. We are indeed lucky to have Obama on the scene. The world can use this type of thinking to begin healing our petty, superficial differences. The world will be a better place if we all come together and pull in the same positive direction as Barack Obama. Barack's father would be beyond proud (although not at all surprised) at how Obama took his multi cultural, multi racial DNA and turned it into a very real and truly visionary platform to inspire tens upons tens of millions of people. And to think his journey has only just begun. Wow!! Can't wait to read The Audacity Of Hope...which I will beginDreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance the moment I hit send on this review. 5 Stars!!!!