A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother

Janny Scott

May 2011 · Penguin Random House Audio · Isinalaysay ni January LaVoy

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A major publishing event: an unprecedented look into the life of the woman who most singularly shaped Barack Obama-his mother.

Barack Obama has written extensively about his father, but little is known about Stanley Ann Dunham, the fiercely independent woman who raised him, the person he credits for, as he says, "what is best in me." Here is the missing piece of the story.

Award-winning reporter Janny Scott interviewed nearly two hundred of Dunham's friends, colleagues, and relatives (including both her children), and combed through boxes of personal and professional papers, letters to friends, and photo albums, to uncover the full breadth of this woman's inspiring and untraditional life, and to show the remarkable extent to which she shaped the man Obama is today.

Dunham's story moves from Kansas and Washington state to Hawaii and Indonesia. It begins in a time when interracial marriage was still a felony in much of the United States, and culminates in the present, with her son as our president- something she never got to see. It is a poignant look at how character is passed from parent to child, and offers insight into how Obama's destiny was created early, by his mother's extraordinary faith in his gifts, and by her unconventional mothering. Finally, it is a heartbreaking story of a woman who died at age fifty-two, before her son would go on to his greatest accomplishments and reflections of what she taught him.

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Janny Scott is the author of A Singular Woman. Previously, she was a reporter for The New York Times from 1994 to 2009 and was a member of the Times reporting team that won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting.

January LaVoy is a stage, television, and voice actress. She performed on Broadway in Enron and on television in One Life to Live, All My Children, Law & Order, Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Law & Order: SVU, and Guiding Light.