Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father: A Tale of Redemption

Barack Obamas Dreams from My Father A Story of Race and Inheritance is a well written essay well-nigh a singular front for identity across cities and continents, region and race. The autobiography focuses on Obamas need for redemption driven by an uncompromising desire to know his biological experience. Barack, the father, was a Kenyan native whose absence informed Obamas dreams and whose marriage to his white mother, Ann, determined his daily reality.It is a compelling story about the convey of family, nuclear and extended, and a young mans interestingness of an authentic self in the complex nexus of race, class, and gender as historically represented in America. The book, written in lively prose, takes the reader on a journey from Obamas origins in Hawaii, to Indonesia, occidental College in Los, Angeles, Columbia University in refreshing York, and to Chicago where he begins his public service career magic spell learning a few painful lessons about politics. In Chicago, Obam a evolves into a mature, self-conscious politician.These twelvemonths, it seems, prepare Obama to acquiesce his bi-racial self and to receive his inheritance in Africa where his father and grandfather have been buried. In Kenya, Obama discovers his unfamiliar family and the booze of his ancestors bundled in a series of earn and memories as shared by his African Granny. In the end, Obama pass offs a way to affirm his common destiny without pretending to speak to, or for all our various struggles (Obama, 2004, xvi). cardinal text and subtext are about a boys search for his father, and through that search a workable meaning for his life as a Black American (Obama, 2004, xvi).Barack Obamas Dreams From My Father A Tale of repurchase In recalling the deadly attack on September 11, 2001, Barack Obama confesses that for him archives returned that day with a vengeance (Obama, 2001, x). Referencing William Falkner, Obama speaks of the late(prenominal) as never dead or buriedit isnt e ven ago because the collective departed touches the individual in the present (Obama, 2001, x). His life, as presented in Dreams From My Father, is a reflexive and self-conscious memoir which facilitates Obamas locating of a past that he did not know, one that he could not understand, and a history wanting in authenticity.From his earliest years, Obamas thoughts and dreams had been interpreted through the prism of an absentee father whom he would never know. The book is organized into three sections consisting of nineteen chapters. Written in lively and description detail, it is a indirect narrative with a clear beginning and end. In Part One, Origins, Obama provides a window into his formative years in Indonesia with Lolo, his mothers second husband, with whom he learned how to fight, to stay low and dont give them a target (p. 36).But it was at the Panahou Academy in Hawaii where issues of belonging or not, rig its way into the innocence of his childhood. Obama confesses that during this time, his sense that he did not belong continued to grow (p. 60). As a teenager, Obama would trip out by experimenting with various drugs. He would also, on occasion seek the advice of his grandfathers friend, Frank, an eighty year old poet living in Waikiki. For example, when Frank learned that Obama was planning to attend occidental College in Los Angeles, he made clear that Obama should understand that he would be trained and not educated there.He urged Obama to go to Occidental but to keep his eyes open and stay awake concerned that the experience would further break-dance him from his past (p. 97). Classmates at Occidental often took him to task for what appeared to have been self-indulgent and narcissistic tendencies. For example, Regina, another assimilator involved in a campus protest, made it clear that Obamas speech was not about him (p. 109). Her diatribe is worth noting Well, let me tell you something, Mr. Obama. Its not just about you. Its never just abo ut you. Its about people who need your help. Children who are depending on you.Theyre not interested in your irony or your sophistication or your ego getting bruised. And neither am I. (p. 109) The confused Obama by and by decided to participate in an exchange program that allowed him to take classes at Columbia University in unexampled York. Upon arriving in Manhattan, he experienced the fright and humiliation of homelessness until redeemed by Sadik, a friend with whom he later shared an apartment. It was while at Columbia, however, that Obama began to take his studies seriously and to explore his role as a reformer and a person who could create change. For these reasons, it appears, he decided to stop getting high (p. 120).In Part Two, Chicago, we find Obama on the ground rallying for the poor, homeless, and unemployed. For example, critical to Obamas success and instrumental to his moving to Chicago had been Marty Kaufman, a man of Jewish descent who had established the Calume t Community Religious Conference. This organization, encompassing twenty suburban churches and later joined by the Developing Communities Project affiliated with the city, brought blacks and whites together to discuss the shame of unemployment, their hero-worship of losing a house or of being cheated out of a pension the common sense of having been betrayed (p. 150).These organizations were a real time response to the alarming rate of unemployment due to layoffs and company closings on the Southside of Chicago. At the very(prenominal) time, Smittys Barbershop, a spot near Hyde Park where the men talked of sports and women and yesterdays headlines, conversation at once intimate and anonymous, among men who agreed to leave their troubles outside, provided a space for Obama to test his rhetoric and his dexterity to assimilate without detection of his white heritage (p. 146).Obamas encounters with Mary, a white single mother whose two children had been fathered by an absentee black man his collaboration with organizers such as Angela, Shirley, Mona, and Will as well as his ascendancy to the Presidency of the Harvard Law Review were an attempt to run from the past while constructing a prospective (pgs. 167-175). In spite of his successes, Obama remained distracted by an unexplained emptiness. In Part Three, Kenya, we find Obama acknowledging and acting on his need to connect with his past by traveling first to Europe and then Africa in search of his heritage.After Grannys detailed story about the struggles of both his grandfather and father, Barack discovers a series of letters that answer many of his questions. At this point, the circle closes, the black hole is filled, and Obama realizes that he has been haunted by his fathers silence and shaped by his absence. Somewhere near their Kenyan graves, Obama purged himself of the past and departed his familial home a different person, a man who could face the truth of his past and future without fear of rejection. A memoir by definition is cathartic.Obamas Dreams From My Father is worthy of analysis because rarely do we see so much of the realization of the American dream encompassed in the life of one person. The past returned with a vengeance while in Kenya where Obama and all of his fathers received the promise of redemption (p. 135). Relying on vocal histories for the most part, Barack Obamas story of race and inheritance may be one of the most open and accurate autobiographical works in recent memory. References Obama, Barack. (2004). Dreams From My Father A Story of Race and Inheritance. New York Crown Publishers.