Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, Barak Obama, reviewed

Originally published in 1995, and then republished in 2004, this book helped propel Barak Obama’s successful rise to the Whitehouse. In the dying days of his crazed successor, it is important to look at the positive and inspiring contrasts out there in terms of why others run for political office. Obama was driven by a desire to help others, not as a self-serving egotistical venture to line his own and his associates’ pockets.

Available from Amazon among other places.

An international bestseller which has sold over a million copies in the UK, Dreams From My Father is a refreshing, revealing portrait of a young man asking big questions about identity and belonging.

The son of a black African father and a white American mother, President Obama recounts an emotional odyssey. He retraces the migration of his mother’s family from Kansas to Hawaii, then to his childhood home in Indonesia. Finally he travels to Kenya, where he confronts the bitter truth of his father’s life and at last reconciles his divided inheritance.

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, Barak Obama, reviewed

The US has always been a country of deep contrasts. On one hand, it was the destination of the religious extremists of their time in the 16th century who were booted out of the UK. On the other hand it was the country that accepted the tired, poor and hungry of the world, proving a safe(er) harbour and sanctuary for many fleeing Ireland during the great famine of the 19th century.

Subsequently it has both been the location of the Ku  Klux Klan and thankfully also the inspiration and leadership of Martin Luther King Jr and others. To achieve civil rights for all, both in the US and to inspire other movements around the world too.

Barak Obama’s existence arose due to a brief partnership between his mother, an American woman, and his father, a clever, but mercurial Kenyan father. Barak saw little of his father during his life, as he moved onto Harvard without his family, and then subsequently back to Kenya, with other wives, both white and black too.

This book is an attempt to understand and make sense, both of his own heritage, his place in the world, and to better understand and empathise with the people he was trying to work with and help in South Chicago, and subsequently further afield too.

In current times where so much is decried as fake news, it is possible to see the origin of some of these trends with claims that Obama was not born in the US. Which have of course now been followed with completely fact-free assertions of the 2020 election having been stolen. We are now seeing, in real time the problems that result from electing people to positions of power who have no competence, ability or motivation beyond serving their own ego.

In this context books like this one show the value of taking the time to actually read books at all (something #potus45 has shown no interest or inclination to do). To have a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the challenges we face, and the thought it requires to identify real and effective solutions to complex issues.

Even 25 years later this is a book that is well worth reading, and hopefully it helps move the conservation beyond trite and inflammatory slogans to positive and inclusive solutions.

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