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Book Review: Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

Part 2: Chicago pp. 131-295

By Barack Obama (Autobiography)

Copyright 1995 Three Rivers Press: New York

Part 2: Chicago of Barack Obama’s autobiography Dreams from My Father chronicles Obama’s time in the Midwest after his graduation from Columbia University. The accounts reveal a more hardened and savvy Obama than in Part 1.

It is in Chicago that Obama begins his efforts as a community organizer. Working in the predominantly black and impoverished south side, Barack learns what he considers the limitations of Black Nationalism. He questions whether it could exist independent of white resentment:

It was [the] unyielding reality—that whites were not simply phantoms to be expunged from our dreams but were an active and varied fact of our everyday lives—that finally explained how nationalism could thrive as an emotion and flounder as a program . . . [T]he descent from such unifying fervor to the practical choices blacks confronted every day was steep (Dreams From my Father, pg 202).

In Part 2 we meet the now-infamous Reverend Jeremiah Wright, a person Obama appears ambivalent toward. I believe Obama’s accounts support the notion that he had respect for the reverend, but their bond was not inalienable. It is true that his second book The Audacity of Hope is titled after a sermon Wright gave. However, it is also true that Obama felt Wright’s sermons were prosaic at times. Hence, Obama’s 2008 withdrawal from the Trinity United Church of Christ was not completely a political move. He reveals that he is not incredibly attached to religion. On faith, Obama admits he has issues distinguishing “between faith and simple endurance” and “having too many quarrels with God to accept a salvation too easily won (pg 287).”

Auma Obama, Barack’s sister, sheds light on the mystery that surrounds their father. At one time, Barack Sr. was the figure that Obama revered. But his uncompromising political views eventually betrayed the Kenyan president, which resulted in his blacklist from the high paying positions in government. To keep up the charade of the great Dr. Obama, he gave charities priority over buying food for the family. The intelligent man Obama grew up seeking approval from was reduced to a drunken façade. This aggrandized reality exacerbated Obama’s own view of himself. What replaced the fantasy of his father was the fear that he would endure a similar stifled fate. To find more meaning, Obama plans a trip for Kenya.

For a review of Part 1: Origins of Barack Obama’s autobiography Dreams From My Father, Click Here

Book Review: Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

Part 1: Origins pp. 1-129

By Barack Obama (Autobiography)

Copyright 1995 Three Rivers Press: New York

Dreams from My Father: Origins traces Obama’s childhood years in Hawaii and Indonesia and his undergraduate years in Los Angeles and New York. The recollection is from the perspective of Obama following his tenure as the first black president of Harvard Law Review (prior to his election to the Illinois State Senate).

President or not, Barack Obama is a genuine perspective and a breath of fresh air to the juggernaut that is American politics. In Part 1 of his autobiography, Obama illustrates the identity struggle that many multiracial Americans face. His struggle is exacerbated by the revolving door of father figures involved in his upbringing.

There was Lolo, who was Barack’s stepfather in Indonesia. A rugged veteran, Lolo served as emotional guidance. After getting beat up, it was Lolo who bought boxing gloves, and instilled values of strength and protection into a youthful Obama.

There was Gramps, who was Barack’s white grandfather. Gramps was not the breadwinner of the family, it was his wife Toot—Barack’s grandmother. Although gramps and Toot showed unconditional love to their live-in grandson, Obama discerns that they repressed racism, rather than confronted it.

Barack Obama Sr. is perhaps the most elusive figure in Barack Obama’s life. Like Jr, he was Harvard educated. Sr. had many children living around the world. One thing that I have not yet understood, which perhaps is a premise of the novel, is Obama’s readiness to respect his father, who was detached from him throughout his youth. It appears Barack Sr. was too busy with Kenyan politics to perform as a father. In any case, Barack Sr. died in a car crash in 1982, and it is perhaps the mystique of his father that drives Obama to finding himself.

Origins ends with Obama abandoning a posh opportunity working at a New York consulting firm to become a community organizer. This is arguably the beginning of Obama’s political career because he is getting involved in the collective action and grassroots that are necessary to make things happen in a political system.

Review By Jason Alyesh

Book Review––Dateline: Troy (2006) by Paul Fleischman

Publisher: Candlewick

I haven’t read Homer’s Iliad since the 7th grade, and with frankness, I can say that I was more likely reading Cliffs’ account than Homer’s. Eventually, my memories from this exposure to the Iliad more or less combined with Hollywood’s blockbuster and disappointment Troy, which was released 10 years later. In Fleischman’s juxtaposition Dateline: Troy, he reformed my understanding of the Trojan War––which happened over 2 thousand years ago––while also refreshing United States history over the past half century. Fleischman does this by juxtaposing the Iliad storyline with American newspaper headlines.

While reading, I was skeptical at first. What implications was Fleischman trying to make? I kept a vigilante eye for American historical inaccuracies and signs of political leaning. However, upon further reading, this auditing transformed. I became more interested in recognizing the author’s connections between the American ethos and Greek mythological events. In one account, the Greeks failed to storm the vast walls of Troy and resort to years of pillaging ally cities in the region. Fleischman contrasts this event with a headline about how hostile territory is undermining efforts to capture Osama Bin Laden. In his next described account, 8 years pass, and the Greeks point their spears at each other, which offers an iconoclastic tale of Odysseus––one not taught in today’s public schools. After reading such accounts and others, I thought to myself, who symbolized Troy, the United States, Agamemnon, or the Gods?