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A World of Books With Reviews
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
by Barack Obama
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
is a memoir by President of the United States Barack Obama. It
was first published in 1995 after Obama was elected the first
African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, but before
his political career began.
Dreams from My
Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
By Barack Obama
More
Books from Amazon.co.uk The book was re-released in 2004
following Obama's keynote address at the 2004 Democratic
National Convention (DNC); the 2004 edition includes a new
introduction by Obama, then a Senator-elect, as well as his DNC
keynote address.
Dreams from My Father Review
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Narrative
The autobiographical narrative tells the story of the life of
Obama up to his entry in Harvard Law School. He was born in
Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Obama, Sr. of Kenya, and Ann Dunham
of Wichita, Kansas, both students at that time at the East-West
Centre of the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Obama's parents
separated when he was two years old and divorced in 1964. Obama
formed an image of his absent father from stories told by his
mother and her parents. He saw his father only one more time, in
1971, when Obama Sr. came to Hawaii for a month's visit.[1]
The elder Obama died in a car accident in 1982.[2]
After her divorce, Ann Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, an
East-West Centre student from Indonesia. The family moved to
Jakarta. When Obama was ten, he returned to Hawaii under the
care of his grandparents (and later his mother) for the better
educational opportunities available there. He was enrolled in
the fifth grade at Punahou School, a private college-preparatory
school. Obama was one of three Black students among the majority
Asian-American population at that school,[3]
and he first became conscious of racism and what it means to be
an African-American.
Obama attended Punahou School from the 5th grade until his
graduation in 1979. Obama writes: "For my grandparents, my
admission into Punahou Academy heralded the start of something
grand, an elevation in the family status that they took great
pains to let everyone know."
Upon finishing high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles, where
he enrolled at Occidental College, where he describes living a
"party" lifestyle of drug and alcohol use.[4][5][6]
After two years at Occidental, he transferred to Columbia
College at Columbia University, in Manhattan, New York City,
where he majored in political science.[6]
Upon graduation, he worked for a year in business. He then moved
to Chicago, working for a non-profit doing community organizing
in the Altgeld Gardens housing project on the city's South Side.
Obama recounts the difficulty of the experience, as his program
faced resistance from entrenched community leaders and apathy on
the part of the established bureaucracy. It was during his time
spent here that Obama joined Chicago's Trinity United Church of
Christ.[6]
Before attending Harvard Law School, Obama decided to visit
relatives in Kenya. He uses part of his experience there as the
setting for the book's final, emotional scene.
As well as relating the story of Obama's life, the book
includes a good deal of reflection on his own personal
experiences with race and race relations in the United States.
Basis for characters
With the exception of family members and a handful of public
figures, Barack Obama is open in the preface about using changed
names for privacy reasons and composite characters to expedite
the narrative flow.[8]
Various writers have suggested that the following characters are
based on real people Obama knew:
| Real life person |
Referred in the book as |
| Earl Chew |
Marcus[9] |
| Frank Davis |
Frank[10] |
| Loretta Herron |
Angela[11] |
| Emil Jones |
Old Ward Boss[12] |
| Keith Kakugawa |
Ray[13] |
| Joella Edwards |
Coretta[14] |
| Ronald Loui |
Frederick[15] |
| Jerry Kellman |
Marty[16] |
| Sohale Siddiqi |
Sadik[17] |
Reception
In discussing Dreams from My Father, Nobel Laureate
Toni Morrison has called Obama "a writer in my high esteem" and
the book "quite extraordinary." She praised "his ability to
reflect on this extraordinary mesh of experiences that he has
had, some familiar and some not, and to really meditate on that
the way he does, and to set up scenes in narrative structure,
dialogue, conversation--all of these things that you don't often
see, obviously, in the routine political memoir biography. [...]
It's unique. It's his. There are no other ones like that."[18]
The book "may be the best-written memoir ever produced by an
American politician," wrote Time columnist Joe Klein.[19]
In 2008, The Guardian's Rob Woodard wrote that Dreams
from My Father "is easily the most honest, daring, and
ambitious volume put out by a major US politician in the last 50
years."[20]
Michiko Kakutani, the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for The
New York Times, described it as "the most evocative, lyrical
and candid autobiography written by a future president."[21]
The audio book edition earned Obama the 2006 Grammy Award for
Best Spoken Word Album.[22]
Versions
- New York: Times Books; 1st edition (July 18, 1995);
Hardcover: 403 pages; ISBN 0-8129-2343-X
- This printing is now very rare. Only a few signed
copies are known, and are estimated to be worth up to
$13,000 (depending on condition).
- New York: Kodansha International (August 1996);
Paperback: 403 pages; ISBN 1-5683-6162-9
- New York: Three Rivers Press; Reprint edition (August
10, 2004); Paperback: 480 pages; ISBN 1-4000-8277-3
- New York: Random House Audio; Abridged edition (May 3,
2005); Audio CD; ISBN 0-7393-2100-5; Includes the senator's
speech from the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
- New York: Random House Audio; Abridged edition on
Playaway digital audio player
[23]
- New York: Random House Large Print; 1st Large print
edition (April 4, 2006); Hardcover: 720 pages; ISBN
0-7393-2576-0
- New York: Crown Publishers (January 9, 2007); Hardcover:
464 pages; ISBN 0-3073-8341-5
- New York: Random House (January 9, 2007); eBook; ISBN
0-3073-9412-3
- Translations
- Chinese: The Dream Road of Obama : Yi Fu Chih Ming,
translated by Yao-Hui Wang, Kuan-Lan Shih China Times
Publishing Company, Taipei, Taiwan, (2008), ISBN
978-957-13-4926-8
- Dutch: Dromen van mijn vader, translated by Joost
Zwart, Atlas, (2007), ISBN 978-904-500-089-3
- French: Les rêves de mon père, translated by
[Paris] Presses De La Cité, Paris, France, (2008), ISBN
978-225-807-597-9
- Hebrew: Ḥalomot me-avi, translated by Edna
Shemesh, Tel Aviv, Israel, (2008), OCLC 256955212
- Korean: Nae abŏji robutŏ ŭi kkum, translated by
Kyŏng-sik Yi, Random House Korea, Seoul, Korea, (2007), ISBN
978-892-551-014-9
- Spanish: Los sueños de mi padre : una historia de
raza y herencia, Vintage Español, New York City, New
York, (2009), ISBN 978-030-747-387-5
- Swedish: Min far hade en dröm, Albert Bonniers
förlag (2008), ISBN 9789100117283
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