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Barack Obama

Yuya Kiuchi

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance Paperback – August 10, 2004

by Barack Obama (Author)

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • ONE OF ESSENCE’S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS

In this iconic memoir of his early days, Barack Obama “guides us straight to the intersection of the most serious questions of identity, class, and race” (The Washington Post Book World).

“Quite extraordinary.”—Toni Morrison

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.

Praise for Dreams from My Father

“Beautifully crafted . . . moving and candid . . . This book belongs on the shelf beside works like James McBride’s The Color of Water and Gregory Howard Williams’s Life on the Color Line as a tale of living astride America’s racial categories.”—Scott Turow

“Provocative . . . Persuasively describes the phenomenon of belonging to two different worlds, and thus belonging to neither.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Obama’s writing is incisive yet forgiving. This is a book worth savoring.”—Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here

“One of the most powerful books of self-discovery I’ve ever read, all the more so for its illuminating insights into the problems not only of race, class, and color, but of culture and ethnicity. It is also beautifully written, skillfully layered, and paced like a good novel.”—Charlayne Hunter-Gault, author of In My Place

“Dreams from My Father is an exquisite, sensitive study of this wonderful young author’s journey into adulthood, his search for community and his place in it, his quest for an understanding of his roots, and his discovery of the poetry of human life. Perceptive and wise, this book will tell you something about yourself whether you are black or white.”—Marian Wright Edelman

Print length

464 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Crown
Publication date

August 10, 2004
Dimensions

5.2 x 0.9 x 7.98 inches
ISBN-10

9781400082773
ISBN-13

978-1400082773
Lexile measure

1010L
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Popular Highlights in this book

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To be black was to be the beneficiary of a great inheritance, a special destiny, glorious burdens that only we were strong enough to bear.
Highlighted by 903 Kindle readers
“Sometimes you can’t worry about hurt. Sometimes you worry only about getting where you have to go.”
Highlighted by 811 Kindle readers
She had taught me to disdain the blend of ignorance and arrogance that too often characterized Americans abroad.
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama was offered a book contract, but the intellectual journey he planned to recount became instead this poignant, probing memoir of an unusual life. Born in 1961 to a white American woman and a black Kenyan student, Obama was reared in Hawaii by his mother and her parents, his father having left for further study and a return home to Africa. So Obama's not-unhappy youth is nevertheless a lonely voyage to racial identity, tensions in school, struggling with black literature?with one month-long visit when he was 10 from his commanding father. After college, Obama became a community organizer in Chicago. He slowly found place and purpose among folks of similar hue but different memory, winning enough small victories to commit himself to the work?he's now a civil rights lawyer there. Before going to law school, he finally visited Kenya; with his father dead, he still confronted obligation and loss, and found wellsprings of love and attachment. Obama leaves some lingering questions?his mother is virtually absent?but still has written a resonant book. Photos not seen by PW. Author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

“Provocative . . . Persuasively describes the phenomenon of belonging to two different worlds, and thus belonging to neither.”
—New York Times Book Review

“Fluidly, calmly, insightfully, Obama guides us straight to the intersection of the most serious questions of identity, class, and race.”
—Washington Post Book World

“Beautifully crafted . . . moving and candid . . . this book belongs on the shelf beside works like James McBride’s The Color of Water and Gregory Howard Williams’s Life on the Color Line as a tale of living astride America’s racial categories.” —Scott Turow

“Obama’s writing is incisive yet forgiving. This is a book worth savoring.”
—Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here

From the Inside Flap

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.

From the Back Cover

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.

About the Author

Barack Obama was the 44th president of the United States, elected in November 2008 and holding office for two terms. He is the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize and the New York Times bestselling author of Dreams from My Father, The Audacity of Hope, and A Promised Land. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Michelle. They have two daughters, Malia and Sasha.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Preface to the 2004 Edition

Almost a decade has passed since this book was first published. As I mention in the original introduction, the opportunity to write the book came while I was in law school, the result of my election as the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. In the wake of some modest publicity, I received an advance from a publisher and went to work with the belief that the story of my family, and my efforts to understand that story, might speak in some way to the fissures of race that have characterized the American experience, as well as the fluid state of identity -- the leaps through time, the collision of cultures -- that mark our modern life.

Like most first-time authors, I was filled with hope and despair upon the book’s publication -- hope that the book might succeed beyond my youthful dreams, despair that I had failed to say anything worth saying. The reality fell somewhere in between. The reviews were mildly favorable. People actually showed up at the readings my publisher arranged. The sales were underwhelming. And, after a few months, I went on with the business of my life, certain that my career as an author would be short-lived, but glad to have survived the process with my dignity more or less intact.

I had little time for reflection over the next ten years. I ran a voter registration project in the 1992 election cycle, began a civil rights practice, and started teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago. My wife and I bought a house, were blessed with two gorgeous, healthy, and mischievous daughters, and struggled to pay the bills. When a seat in the state legislature opened up in 1996, some friends persuaded me to run for the office, and I won. I had been warned, before taking office, that state politics lacks the glamour of its Washington counterpart; one labors largely in obscurity, mostly on topics that mean a great deal to some but that the average man or woman on the street can safely ignore (the regulation of mobile homes, say, or the tax consequences of farm equipment depreciation). Nonetheless, I found the work satisfying, mostly because the scale of state politics allows for concrete results -- an expansion of health insurance for poor children, or a reform of laws that send innocent men to death row -- within a meaningful time frame. And too, because within the capitol building of a big, industrial state, one sees every day the face of a nation in constant conversation: inner-city mothers and corn and bean farmers, immigrant day laborers alongside suburban investment bankers -- all jostling to be heard, all ready to tell their stories.

A few months ago, I won the Democratic nomination for a seat as the U.S. senator from Illinois. It was a difficult race, in a crowded field of well-funded, skilled, and prominent candidates; without organizational backing or personal wealth, a black man with a funny name, I was considered a long shot. And so, when I won a majority of the votes in the Democratic primary, winning in white areas as well as black, in the suburbs as well as Chicago, the reaction that followed echoed the response to my election to the Law Review. Mainstream commentators expressed surprise and genuine hope that my victory signaled a broader change in our racial politics. Within the black community, there was a sense of pride regarding my accomplishment, a pride mingled with frustration that fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education and forty years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, we should still be celebrating the possibility (and only the possibility, for I have a tough general election coming up) that I might be the sole African American -- and only the third since Reconstruction -- to serve in the Senate. My family, friends, and I were mildly bewildered by the attention, and constantly aware of the gulf between the hard sheen of media reports and the messy, mundane realities of life as it is truly lived.

Just as that spate of publicity prompted my publisher’s interest a decade ago, so has this fresh round of news clippings encouraged the book’s re-publication. For the first time in many years, I’ve pulled out a copy and read a few chapters to see how much my voice may have changed over time. I confess to wincing every so often at a poorly chosen word, a mangled sentence, an expression of emotion that seems indulgent or overly practiced. I have the urge to cut the book by fifty pages or so, possessed as I am with a keener appreciation for brevity. I cannot honestly say, however, that the voice in this book is not mine -- that I would tell the story much differently today than I did ten years ago, even if certain passages have proven to be inconvenient politically, the grist for pundit commentary and opposition research.

What has changed, of course, dramatically, decisively, is the context in which the book might now be read. I began writing against a backdrop of Silicon Valley and a booming stock market; the collapse of the Berlin Wall; Mandela -- in slow, sturdy steps -- emerging from prison to lead a country; the signing of peace accords in Oslo. Domestically, our cultural debates -- around guns and abortion and rap lyrics -- seemed so fierce precisely because Bill Clinton’s Third Way, a scaled-back welfare state without grand ambition but without sharp edges, seemed to describe a broad, underlying consensus on bread-and-butter issues, a consensus to which even George W. Bush’s first campaign, with its “compassionate conservatism,” would have to give a nod. Internationally, writers announced the end of history, the ascendance of free markets and liberal democracy, the replacement of old hatreds and wars between nations with virtual communities and battles for market share.

And then, on September 11, 2001, the world fractured.

It’s beyond my skill as a writer to capture that day, and the days that would follow -- the planes, like specters, vanishing into steel and glass; the slow-motion cascade of the towers crumbling into themselves; the ash-covered figures wandering the streets; the anguish and the fear. Nor do I pretend to understand the stark nihilism that drove the terrorists that day and that drives their brethren still. My powers of empathy, my ability to reach into another’s heart, cannot penetrate the blank stares of those who would murder innocents with abstract, serene satisfaction.

What I do know is that history returned that day with a vengeance; that, in fact, as Faulkner reminds us, the past is never dead and buried -- it isn’t even past. This collective history, this past, directly touches my own. Not merely because the bombs of Al Qaeda have marked, with an eerie precision, some of the landscapes of my life -- the buildings and roads and faces of Nairobi, Bali, Manhattan; not merely because, as a consequence of 9/11, my name is an irresistible target of mocking websites from overzealous Republican operatives. But also because the underlying struggle -- between worlds of plenty and worlds of want; between the modern and the ancient; between those who embrace our teeming, colliding, irksome diversity, while still insisting on a set of values that binds us together, and those who would seek, under whatever flag or slogan or sacred text, a certainty and simplification that justifies cruelty toward those not like us -- is the struggle set forth, on a miniature scale, in this book.

I know, I have seen, the desperation and disorder of the powerless: how it twists the lives of children on the streets of Jakarta or Nairobi in much the same way as it does the lives of children on Chicago’s South Side, how narrow the path is for them between humiliation and untrammeled fury, how easily they slip into violence and despair. I know that the response of the powerful to this disorder -- alternating as it does between a dull complacency and, when the disorder spills out of its proscribed confines, a steady, unthinking application of force, of longer prison sentences and more sophisticated military hardware -- is inadequate to the task. I know that the hardening of lines, the embrace of fundamentalism and tribe, dooms us all.

And so what was a more interior, intimate effort on my part, to understand this struggle and to find my place in it, has converged with a broader public debate, a debate in which I am professionally engaged, one that will shape our lives and the lives of our children for many years to come.

The policy implications of all this are a topic for another book. Let me end instead on a more personal note. Most of the characters in this book remain a part of my life, albeit in varying degrees -- a function of work, children, geography, and turns of fate.

The exception is my mother, whom we lost, with a brutal swiftness, to cancer a few months after this book was published.

She had spent the previous ten years doing what she loved. She traveled the world, working in the distant villages of Asia and Africa, helping women buy a sewing machine or a milk cow or an education that might give them a foothold in the world’s economy. She gathered friends from high and low, took long walks, stared at the moon, and foraged through the local markets of Delhi or Marrakesh for some trifle, a scarf or stone carving that would make her laugh or please the eye. She wrote reports, read novels, pestered her children, and dreamed of grandchildren.

We saw each other frequently, our bond unbroken. During the writing of this book, she would read the drafts, correcting stories that I had misunderstood, careful not to comment on my characterizations of her but quick to explain or defend the less flattering aspects of my father’s character. She managed her illness with grace and good humor, and she helped my sister and me push on with our lives, despite our dread, our denials, our sudden constrictions of the heart.

I think sometimes that had I known she would not survive her illness, I might have written a different book -- less a meditation on the absent parent, more a celebration of the one who was the single constant in my life. In my daughters I see her every day, her joy, her capacity for wonder. I won’t try to describe how deeply I mourn her passing still. I know that she was the kindest, most generous spirit I have ever known, and that what is best in me I owe to her.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1400082773
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Crown (August 10, 2004)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 464 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781400082773
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1400082773
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1010L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.5 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.2 x 0.9 x 7.98 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #36,910 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #130 in African American Demographic Studies (Books)
- #181 in Black & African American Biographies
- #1,449 in Memoirs (Books)

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Barack Obama
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Barack Obama was the 44th president of the United States, elected in November 2008 and holding office for two terms. He is the author of three New York Times bestselling books, Dreams from My Father, The Audacity of Hope, and A Promised Land, and is the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Michelle. They have two daughters, Malia and Sasha.
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Yuya Kiuchi
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Yuya Kiuchi is an assistant professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Michigan State University. His research areas include: African American Studies and History, American Studies and History, Popular Culture Studies, Urban History, Youth Culture, and Science Technology and Society Studies.
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The Old Man

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 25, 2022

Verified Purchase

Already an admirer, my respect for Barack Obama grew immensely while reading this book. Not only is he a skilled and gifted writer, he’s also a storyteller with a mind for details and flair for engaging the reader. His descriptions of an African dawn: “To the east, the sky lightens above a black grove of trees, deep blue, then orange, hen creamy yellow. The clouds lose their purple tint slowly, then dissipate, leaving behind a single star. As we pull out of camp, we see a caravan of giraffe, their long necks at a common slant, seemingly black before the rising red sun, strange marking against an ancient sky.”

It’s a book about race, yes, but it’s also about family, inheritance, culture, background and how those factors (and more) combine to make us who we are. While most people know Obama’s father was Kenyan and his mother an American from Kansas, most don’t know that much about how they met and later parted ways, his Indonesian stepfather, his white grandparents, Toot and Gramps, with whom he lived in Hawaii during his youth….I’m no biographer, but I do know that Obama’s life was much more complicated than mine.

“How?” ran like a thread through each chapter I read. How does a person develop the strength, capacity, confidence, and character to serve as the President of the United States? It’s an office available to only one person at a time and one that had never been open to a person of color. Learning about his experiences with his family of orientation, especially his grandparents, his time in Indonesia, his college years, the devoted years as a community organizer, and his time spent in Kenya becoming acquainted with brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, and a grandparent added some answers to pieces to the puzzle.

What the book did was remind me once again of how many ways there are to live, love, and serve as we navigate our ways through life. There are no shortcuts to excellence.

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Jack

...a faith in other people a.k.a. sharing the struggle...

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 11, 2016

Verified Purchase

I liked the persistent & stubborn self-awareness of the main character, called Barry by his family & friends, who ostensibly needed to recognize & consent or accept his inner emotional self for a multitude of conflicting cultural reasons, as someone he might like to know & learn to love, in perpetual pursuit of his chosen life’s work – in the profoundly thorough (1995) book by the not yet President of the United States, Barack Obama entitled, Dreams from My Father – A Story of Race and Inheritance.

I had to often remind myself while I read the book that I shouldn’t think about the penultimate conclusion, or that this was a precursor & not yet the actual or final ending to this young man’s remarkable legacy, in the many years before he became President in 2009, almost 15 years after the book was written in 1995, but the idea of a super-star status was never mentioned as even a possible pipe-dream in his Memoir.

I like Mr. Obama that much better now, as just a regular guy after reading his 1st of 2 books, since I have never met the man aka POTUS (President of the United States) in-person & can only surmise his current character from watching him intermittently in the news on TV; still a dream of mine for the past 8 years while he has been in residence in the White House, mostly just to shake his hand & offer some hopefully sensible utterances with regard to my admiration & gratitude, as well as some polite & respective well-wishes for his post-presidential profession. While this book review is a pre-production preparation for a letter I plan to write to the President, just to let him know that he will certainly be missed, in my estimation, after the election this year (in 2016) - but then again that’s another story.

I’d like to think I can identify with Mr. Obama’s journey of self-discovery, on some level, because I too am tall & have always felt or been told by others that I am thereby different & something I needed to fix in my apparently awkward state-of-affairs, by fearful, if not exasperated mindsets, who seem to rely on regulation labels before they can proceed with the uniform business at-hand. And the fact that Mr. Obama is smarter than most, helped & sometimes hindered his ability to find an easier way to answer his personal questions about race & inheritance, or whatever professional roles he was academically qualified for or subconsciously restricted by society to pursue.

I liked his adamant persistence to find an acceptable answer to every problem he needed to solve. Although, I was not so patient with the community service line-item on his resume, especially at the Altgeld Gardens Public Housing development in Chicago, since I didn’t have the required patience needed to wait so long for worrisome people to help themselves confront the elected powers that be, in order to fix something in a state of historic disrepair that should have been a foregone conclusion of sorts, or a regular procedure of anticipatory repairs. In other words, the owners of the Altgeld Gardens should have audited their property regularly for any subsequent repairs, in my adolescent opinion.

I waited albeit virtually & altogether impatiently with Barry in the background while he admirably engaged with everyone & anyone involved, in order to kick-start the up-keep, but nobody cared apparently, as much as Barry was a complete stranger on a mission of self-help who seemed more compelled to get the job done than the careless or too careful local residents. I immediately wanted to start fixing imaginary broken stuff around the place, while we waited infinitum for the city emissaries, so snug & secure in their suits & ties to make a better-late-then-never & last-minute appearance, just to cut a regulation ribbon to start the overdue removal process of the unseen & imaginatively bizarre amount of dangerous asbestos from so many kids’ hazardous bedrooms.

However, Mr. Obama achieved what he had set out to do on his vision quest of sorts (picked a profession & found a job & followed-thru in pursuit of self-satisfaction) & he also discovered another more apparent avenue of interest to explore (at Harvard), which may not have happened had he not chosen to live in Chicago, in the first place, all within the fantastic status of a particular predicament aka within the altercation of the Altgeld Gardens situation.

As Barry says in the book; ‘The continuing struggle to align word & action, our heartfelt desires with a workable plan – didn’t self-esteem finally depend on just this? It was that belief which had led me into organizing....’

Another favorite line about what I consider the opposite of arrogance when Barry concedes to the moment at-hand & unquestioningly gives attention to a wider unknown audience apart from himself & somewhere out there in the unknown universe, which parenthetically made me suddenly twitch as I realized something comparable, in my shaky effort to stop & persuasively think about what might also be the woeful matter in my own world, when Barry reminds himself about respect & contemplates the task of requisite self-awareness, as he says; ‘Look at yourself before you pass judgement. Don’t make someone else clean up your mess. It’s not (always) about you.’ I had to add the word, (always), because most of us need to relinquish however many self-centered reasons, that it’s almost always about ourselves, once again in my guilty opinion!

There are lots of good words of wisdom within the book to ponder, still his personal scenarios might not be so familiar or quite comfy for everybody all of the time, but that is the measure of what a wise & eventually great man once imagined, somewhere I’m sure, about the best thing we should do as individuals on this overpopulated & getting-smaller-by-the-minute tiny blue planet, to stop for a moment & consider the alternative or aftermath, in fact and/or in faith, to sincerely aspire to help another similar or unlikeable person somehow find themselves, or get to wherever they’re going a little bit easier, in order that you too might finally find yourself by osmosis or acquaintance, in a safer place on the planet & not so forlorn anymore.

Barry realized early in the book that he needed to define his residence as a place to commence from a point of familiarity, while at the start of his journey of self-discovery – ‘And if I had come to understand myself as a black American, and was understood as such, that understanding remained unanchored to place. What I needed was a community, I realized....’

Another favorite line he acknowledges; ‘I can see that my choices were never truly mine alone – and that that is how it should be, that to assert otherwise is to chase after a sorry sort of freedom.’

‘Hate is the culprit,’ he later surmises & so this obviously contemporary idiom could also be the sub-title for this or another book review, perhaps.

A favorite line from his Grandmother always reminded him to look for the good; ‘There’s a bright side somewhere...don’t rest till you find it.’

I wondered afterwards how he would help his extended family in Kenya, whether that constitutes more of a personal commitment rather than a national prerogative & thereby a slight hindrance certainly while he’s the President. Still, I want him to help his brother, Bernard & the other little guy named Godrey, to define their place & purpose in the world, as that certainly seems to quantify a measure of selfless community service, as well as a prerequisite to help a select few family members, but not to give them everything for free without a lesson of sorts inserted, in order for them to help themselves, first & foremost!

And be sure to read the Preface & the Introduction, to appreciate the overall effort, either before or after you read the main story of <500 pages; for example on page xvi – ‘...what has found its way onto these pages is a record of a personal, interior journey – a boy’s search for his father, and through that search a workable meaning for his life as a black American.’

When I recommend this book to my friends who are in search of something spiritually similar, I always remind them that it’s not about the color of his skin; for example, as I see him (and maybe that’s easier for me to say, than it would be for Barry to agree with this superficial summation from a white man), but I always only see him as tall & smart! And that’s what I like about Mr. Obama, something I think we both have in common, for sure & that’s a justifiable start for wanting to help another person reach their goal aka for the good of all concerned, certainly?! - Review by Jack Dunsmoor, author of the book, OK2BG

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GEORGINA R.

Should be mandatory reading

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 23, 2019

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Barack Obama is a superb writer. You might expect that from such a persuasive orator, but remember he wrote this book long before he reached the heady-heights of running for US President. And he writes with such literary skill. You can almost see, feel, touch and smell the faraway lands of which he writes... Hawaii, Indonesia, Kenya and then of course the grittiness of NYC, Chicago. More than this though, which is beautiful and worthy in its own right, this book offers insight. Insight into what it means to be mixed race in a developed nation such as America, a minority, and the constant drive to find meaning and your place of comfort in the world.

Personally I think we should all read this book. Firstly, because for those of us who are non-black we will learn an awful lot that we didn't know about how it feels to be black in America. And secondly, because the majority of us are part of a minority group in some aspect of our lives. This book teaches us what being a minority can do to you, how difficult it can be, including how hard it is to come together as minorities and organise ourselves to bring about change. This book also teaches us that determination and small wins matter. That they can help make a difference. And that bringing about change is important at grassroots level and at leadership levels. It has also helped me to learn about 'organisation', which in itself is also fascinating.

Superb book. Someone should make this guy President.... ;-)

27 people found this helpful

SocialBookshelves.com

and it’s pretty easy to see how his early life is still ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on November 22, 2015

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You might have heard of Mr. Obama before – you know, he’s the president of that country that everyone keeps banging on about. This is his first book, written and released before he even got in to politics, and created at the behest of a publishing company after he became the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.

In many ways, that seems to make the book somehow pure, as though it’s a preserved distilling of the president’s personality when he was a younger man, and it’s pretty easy to see how his early life is still shaping him, even today. In fact, after reading this, I’ve found that it feels as though I know him, as though I could predict how he’ll react in different situations.

But really, that’s not what this book is about – he may be the president now, but that wasn’t always the case, and his book looks back at his early life and examines his feelings towards the father that was never there, his African roots and what being a black American actually means. It’s a fascinating study of race relations in America in the 1970s and 1980s, and what’s more poignant is the fact that while Obama does indeed look at the differences between black people and white people, he eventually concludes that the colour of our skin doesn’t define us.

That’s not to say that he doesn’t face struggles along the way, though – Obama also examines his own biases, and the unintentional way in which we come to judgements all of the time. He himself is guilty of stereotyping, but he tries to correct himself and that in itself is honourable.

Of course, it’s also fascinating to read about his exploits as a kid, and his trips to Kenya and Indonesia, or his work in Chicago trying to make the city a better place before he eventually applied for and was accepted in to Harvard. Turns out that Barack is a pretty good writer, and it shows – it was of a professional quality, with no typos or unnatural sounding sentences. Even the dialogue that he recreates sounds natural and fits perfectly with the character, who are of course real people.

Overall, I’d say that this is well worth a read whether you’re an American or not, and whether or not Obama is still president by the time that you read this. The identity of the author doesn’t really matter – the book speaks for itself, and it has a lot of stuff to say to you, too.

53 people found this helpful

E Griffith

Quite interesting.....

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on February 8, 2021

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I don’t know why but I expected more from this book. Perhaps some insight into what motivated and caused this man to become the most powerful world leader for eight years. But that’s not what it’s about. The clue is in the subtitle. It’s all about race. Understandable, being the son of a white woman and a black man....and he describes racism in Hawaii, New York, Chicago and other places very well. In fact he is an excellent writer. It occasionally goes on a bit too long.....some editing wouldn’t have gone amiss. The problems of racism though, is brought home by the last part of the Brooke, when Obama returns to his “roots” in Kenya. The difference in culture is enormous. The fact that it was deemed acceptable for his father to roam around the world producing children from an assortment of women with a total lack of responsibility seems alien to the “Western” white view. Such large extended families rarely exist elsewhere. This brought home how difficult it’s going to be in the future bringing such diverse cultures together. Obama did very well in doing so.....but it will take a lot mor like him to succeed.

2 people found this helpful

Jorge Zuazola

A very honest book which was written in 1994

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 24, 2017

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A very honest book which was written in 1994. Sarah Alexander a British expert author of the book on Spiritual Intelligence Leadership: From Manager to Leader of Your Own Life (clearly the best one on the matter, because as she says it is "not just another leadership book") dedicates a chapter to the the Power of Intuited Wisdom. Sarah does say that with acceptance, I believe we can accept a new paradigm, what we accept, creates freedom. When we are in a place of full acceptance of who we are, what emotions or physical symptoms we are experiencing, without fighting it mentally, intuition can guide us gracefully forward. If you totally accept what is happening without any negativity and reactivity, you can then turn and face any issue fully, and see exactly how best to address it. If you accept what is happening, you then have the sense that life is working for you, rather than against you, and as a leader you are able to deal with issues and challenges from a Higher and inspired place. The ability to do this is an essential tool in your problem solving kit and brings you to a place of True personal Effectiveness
One leader of our time, who I sense demonstrates this practice very well is Barack Obama. What you think of his politics is not relevant here, because I sense he is able to do consistently, when an issue comes up, is turn and face it head on with full acceptance of what it is. From that place, inevitably, he is able to think clearly, sensing what is the next step to take or how to best handle or manoeuvre the current issue. He appears to me to demonstrate the ability to bring real present moment awareness and thought to issues, without having his mind go into all sort of stories, dramas and emotional upsets about them. This ability naturally gives him access to Higher Consciousness, which he can then choose to follow. This does not mean that he does not seek advice from his many astute advisors, but having sought that advice, I sense that he could allow a Higher Consciousness, to give him the clarity of thought that guides the issues to resolution.

In other words in 2016 I read a British expert praising Obama in the world's best leadership concept ever: Spiritual Intelligence Leadership. This book was written in 1994, 14 years before winning the election and yet the totalitarians populists keep on talking about a birth certificate of the son of an international student in Hawai whose mother was in Hawai. The book is clear. Harry Truman said Leaders are readers but not all readers are leaders. Obama is a leader. Others cannot say the same

4 people found this helpful

Anon

Excellent

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 10, 2017

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Beautifully written. As an African myself I was taken back in time to my own experiences good and bad. Obama conveys his journey with emotion and frankness. I struggled on many occasions to put this book down. It is captivating. Highly recommended...and hope you enjoy it as much as I did. I am proud of this book from my African brother from another mother.

22 people found this helpful

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