Social Sciences
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Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
#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
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
Editorial Reviews
"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
-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
Readers Top Reviews
Joseph ThomasGEOR
I wanted to read this over the length of his presidency, but it never happened. It was a great read. Really helped me understand inner city life and the struggles of the black community. I appreciate his honesty and how hard he fought to make people's lives easier. Makes sense why he was such a great president. I was especially moved with how he explained the challenges of being both white and black. Such a great memoir. Fantastic.
katewickhamJoseph
I remember being astounded when Senator Barack Obama spoke at the 2004 Democratic convention, by his eloquence, compassion, intelligence and humanity, not to mention his poise and magnetic presence. While you expect political speeches to be impressive, his have consistently exceeded his peers. Nevertheless, I put off reading this book for many months after buying it not expecting to experience a book that is as well written and compelling as the best authors of all time. This book will join the select few books I read many times. I grew up visiting my great, great aunts and uncles, and great grandmother/genealogist/treasure keeper/artist. It's staggering to read of President Obama's father's complex family and seems overwhelming to imagine being introduced to the family and country in such a short time. It's also difficult to fathom the hole it would leave to not grow up with generations of family. His story of discovering his roots is magnificent.
Lamar Johnsonkate
It's a wonder I haven't read this book before. Since I first heard about it, I knew it would eventually drift my way and I am thankful it has. Barack's story, like so many others, is one of identity, affirmation, and of his profound sense of being present. Through eloquence and a seemingly poetic choice of words, we ride with him on a bumpy train of curiosity, loss, self exploration, personal development, persistence and joy. We visit each home and at each instance he brings it to life wrapping it in context and history and forcing readers to consider its impact on those involved. As an African American man who has gained some momentum in being authentically me, I appreciate how much of him is also an amalgamation of those closest to him. Thank you Barack for sitting down and taking the time to share your journey with me, it was a worthy venture to explore this chapter in your life. However, as it should be, I'm left wanting more.
andreajosaLamar J
It's clear how from Obama's life how he became such a eloquent, elegant, intellectual, disciplined, balanced and compassionate man. I am impressed at how fascinating his life has been and by that I mean before his presidency. I am a big fan of Obama and his family based on what he achieved as our 44th president but after reading the book I know he earned every bit of his soulful nature. Well written and enjoyably readable, he is candid about his achievements and failures. His humanness but yet his extraordinary perseverance make him a fascinating main character. I particularly liked reading about his family in Africa and the time he spent with them. I have no doubt how formative it was for him to be a biracial, half African, half midwestern American living his childhood largely with his grandparents in Oahu having also spent a few of his young years in Indonesia with his mother and stepfather. This is a treat to read!!!!
Pseudo DCM Ramire
As Joe Scarborough has joked, Obama wrote his autobiography before he had really done anything. There are benefits to this. The Audacity of Hope was written when he was already a Senator and about to run for President, and by then his political skills had developed considerably. I expect that his next memoir will be extremely well written and polished. But Dreams From My Father is the book that most explains who Obama is. His strengths and weaknesses, which make him so admired by many and feared by his opponents, come out strongly. Opponents of Obama will find reasons to empathize with his experience and that of his family, but also will see how that experience shaped his worldview that was imposed on the American people. This book should also show why many people voted for him in the first place, not only because he is an eloquent speaker and skilled writer, but because he has a compelling personal story. Besides the trip to Kenya to search for his family roots, there is an extended reflection on his experience in Chicago as a community organizer. I think this reveals a lot about Obama's qualities as well. There is a true desire to help and improve, an intellectual talent, and yet there's always a geographical displacement and emotional detachment, an outsider's perspective looking in, that somehow distances him even as he tries to immerse in the milieu. (Contrast Bill Clinton's I feel your pain). He is sensitive, perhaps too sensitive and questioning, and yet somehow not empathetic enough for the opposing point of view (e.g. pro life). The end of the book has a reflection from a few years later on being a law student, on justifying the justice system for the powerless, making clear that he was not only liberal but radical. This shows how in his later political career, even when he tried to transcend partisanship and made a lot of intellectual deliberation, he almost always arrived at conclusions on the left end of the spectrum, because he was coming from the far left end. For instance, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, from whom he later had to distance himself, is just a regular normal character in the narrative but was in fact a radical liberationist in his theology. To me the book resembles, in some respects, even the gentle but dark humor, Dennis Kucinich's Courage to Survive, where he did in Cleveland what Obama did in Chicago. I can see why Kucinich eventually endorsed Obama even though by 2008 he had smoothed out his radicalism. Despite the conflict between Western liberalism and traditional African values, Obama is very much a feminist and the Western position won out despite his sympathy for Africa. And yet one of the more compelling passages of the book for me, not politically but personally, is at the end where he reflects on how even in a family where the women have held...
Short Excerpt Teaser
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 ...
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 ...
