Family Affairs

I have just read “Dreams From My Father” by Barack Obama. His memoir was first published in 1995 and then again in 2004. It is an autobiographical narrative of his life up to the point that he goes to Harvard Law School.

We learn of his early life in Hawaii, born to a white mother and a black father, an American and an African. His mother divorced his father when he was very young and later married Lolo Soetoro and they moved to Jakarta, Indonesia. At 10 she sent him back to the USA to live with his maternal grandparents. He doesn’t write much about his relationship with his mother but it is clear that she remained a strong influence in his life and is someone who he loves and respects hugely.

Mostly we read about the struggle he goes through to build up a workable image of his father, based on stories he grew up listening to from various family members and how he tried to rewrite these stories, “plugging up holes in the narrative, accommodating unwelcome details, projecting individual choices against the blind sweep of history, all in the hope of extracting some granite slab of truth upon which my unborn children can firmly stand”.

I thought it was an extremely good book that allows the reader extraordinarily personal insight into the thoughts, history and voyage of discovery that makes up the man who currently resides at the White House. It is a fascinating story about his battle with finding inner peace, his dawning and powerful realisation of racism and finally being comfortable in his own skin and finding meaning for his life as a black American.

I thoroughly recommend it.