Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama
Dreams From My Father is not the Barack Obama story you might expect of a man’s journey to the presidency, but it is rather a humble story of a man from Hawaii, growing up surrounded by his loved ones, his relationships with them and how he navigated through life with all the changes happening all around him — from Hawaii to Indonesia to Los Angeles then New York to Chicago and finally Kenya.
Barack Obama shows us his growth through his experiences in life, whether they were his cultural learnings and experiences in Indonesia as a child and Kenya as an adult, or his learnings on the meanings of race and what it means for him to be a Black man and him learning the responsibilities he has towards it. He also teaches us of the values — of honesty, fairness, straight talk, and independent judgement — he’s learned and the role of his family in shaping those values. He gives us a glimpse into the public figures — the activists, politicians, and writers (such as Malcom X) — who influenced his life as an African American. Barack talks to us about his learnings on the meaning of whiteness, white privilege, and the “white man’s rule.”
When Barack Obama decides it’s time to make a change politically, he went to Chicago with the mission of mobilizing Black people from a political grass roots level against government corruption. There Barack starts to dive deeper into the Black experience. Barack talks to us of his Black experience, how he dealt and went about it. He talks of meeting with Black people from different walks of life. Of different places and different backgrounds.
In a way, many of us will be able to relate to Barack Obama, in the way he tries to find himself through the arduousness and the rough edges of his life. For Barack, however, his journey to find his identity is more linked to his African American identity. Barack navigates his life like a man long lost from all that he knows, constantly attempting to find his way through life, to find his identity as an African American man without any avail. Barack juggles existentially through his half-Kenyan half-White American identity
It would be an injustice to talk about this book without talking about Barack Obama’s writing style. Barack uses metaphors in his writing so beautifully and eloquently that as you’re reading it, it catches your eye and you find yourself repeating the same sentence over and over again in order to appreciate its beauty. I have to say though, I did not (perhaps foolishly) expect such a beautiful, well-written, eloquent, and poetic book.
