Dreams from My Father

The story of Barack Obama’s life, from the beginnings to just before he went to law school at Harvard, subtitled A Story of Race and Inheritance. Raised by his white mother and grandparents, he had to deal with the problems faced by most black people in America while growing up, though in varying degrees, along with the question of his absent father from Kenya. From Hawaii where he was born, to Djarkata where his mother moved to after marrying an Indonesian, then back again to Hawaii for secondary school. His mother and grandparents made sure he got a good education and this probably saved him from the fate of crime and poverty of many black people.

He had always this problem of reconciling his white mother and grandparents in the house, with being regarded as black outside the house. This led him to want to work as a community organizer in Chicago after college, where he proved rather successful. And after a sister studying in Germany visited and told him about their father, he became more interested in finding out more. And so he went to Kenya to meet the African side of his family. There he learns about the exceptional Obama people, from his father to grand-father and beyond, and he finally shed tears for the father he never knew. Very moving indeed!

Contents:
Preface to the 2004 edition
Part One, Origins
Part Two, Chicago
Part Three, Kenya
Epilogue

From the accounts of life in Kenya and the Luo tribe of his father, Kenyans and Nigerians have a lot in common. One of his relations even quoted famous Nigerian author Achebe.

January 28, 2015. Review initially written in 2008. Work first published in 1995 by Times Books, this Three Rivers Press edition being published in 2004, ISBN 978-1-4000-8277-3.