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
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Community Reviews
A wonderful, captivating story of a black man’s journey through differing/opposing levels of expectations, and how it interacts with respect and mutual exchanges.
Barack Obama grew up hearing stories about his father from his mother and his maternal grandparents. Raised in a white household Barack doesn't know what it is to be an African-American and so feels out of place among both his white and his (very few) black classmates. When he is six his mother marries an Indonesian and he then moves with the two of them to Djakarta, Indonesia. His mother taught English to Indonesian businessmen at the American embassy and young Barack attended the local Indonesian school reinforced by three hours every morning of his mother's teaching of American correspondence courses. Indonesia also brought his baby sister, Maya. Once the correspondence courses were exhausted Barack was sent, at ten, back to Hawaii to live again with his maternal grandparents, his mother promising that she and his sister would be joining him soon.
That Christmas his mother did come, as did his father. It was to be the only time he would meet him. A few months after his twenty-first birthday he received a call from an aunt in Africa informing him of his father's death. Dreams from My Father is the tale of a search for identity; a search for family; the search for a connection in the world; of what it means to part of one family; and of the family of man; and of what the influence of both the known and unknown can have on who you are.
Obama eventually travels to Kenya to meet the family of his father and his many siblings and is welcomed as a long lost son. In many ways he feels like he has found something he has lost as well as many more questions left unanswered. If Audacity of Hope read like some kind of campaign propaganda (which it did in some ways) Dreams from My Father reads more like a beautiful novel written truly from the heart. I found it very moving (maybe all the more so because my own father is such an absence in my life, and my identity a little up in the air for reasons of my own). The writing is quite unpoliticianlike (and i mean that only in the nicest way!)
That Christmas his mother did come, as did his father. It was to be the only time he would meet him. A few months after his twenty-first birthday he received a call from an aunt in Africa informing him of his father's death. Dreams from My Father is the tale of a search for identity; a search for family; the search for a connection in the world; of what it means to part of one family; and of the family of man; and of what the influence of both the known and unknown can have on who you are.
Obama eventually travels to Kenya to meet the family of his father and his many siblings and is welcomed as a long lost son. In many ways he feels like he has found something he has lost as well as many more questions left unanswered. If Audacity of Hope read like some kind of campaign propaganda (which it did in some ways) Dreams from My Father reads more like a beautiful novel written truly from the heart. I found it very moving (maybe all the more so because my own father is such an absence in my life, and my identity a little up in the air for reasons of my own). The writing is quite unpoliticianlike (and i mean that only in the nicest way!)
I loved this memoir. The title is a bit of a misnomer. It should be something like "Dreams of My Family." So interesting to hear about the President's extremely diverse family and how they all interacted. I didn't know that much about his family before. I feel like I got a better sense of who Barack Obama is, in his own words, but since it was written before he ran for Senate there's something very open, revealing, and non-political about how he talks about his experiences and family.
My only criticism is that this book does not contain nearly enough Michelle.
My only criticism is that this book does not contain nearly enough Michelle.
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