Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

Barack Obama

Jan 2007 · Sold by Crown

About this ebook

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • ONE OF ESSENCE’S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS

In this iconic memoir of his early days, Barack Obama “guides us straight to the intersection of the most serious questions of identity, class, and race” (The Washington Post Book World).
 
“Quite extraordinary.”—Toni Morrison 
 
In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father—a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man—has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey—first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father’s life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance.
 
Praise for Dreams from My Father
 
“Beautifully crafted . . . moving and candid . . . This book belongs on the shelf beside works like James McBride’s The Color of Water and Gregory Howard Williams’s Life on the Color Line as a tale of living astride America’s racial categories.”—Scott Turow
 
“Provocative . . . Persuasively describes the phenomenon of belonging to two different worlds, and thus belonging to neither.”—The New York Times Book Review
  
“Obama’s writing is incisive yet forgiving. This is a book worth savoring.”—Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here
 
“One of the most powerful books of self-discovery I’ve ever read, all the more so for its illuminating insights into the problems not only of race, class, and color, but of culture and ethnicity. It is also beautifully written, skillfully layered, and paced like a good novel.”—Charlayne Hunter-Gault, author of In My Place
 
“Dreams from My Father is an exquisite, sensitive study of this wonderful young author’s journey into adulthood, his search for community and his place in it, his quest for an understanding of his roots, and his discovery of the poetry of human life. Perceptive and wise, this book will tell you something about yourself whether you are black or white.”—Marian Wright Edelman

Ratings and reviews

I would give it a 5. But from the looks of it. I would be better off buying a real actual book to read whenever i want. My connections is always dropping and i can't finish reading the book. I began lose interest. I need it for school. Wo I'm just gonna waste more money somewhere else. THis is a piece of crap. Just bought thia phone a month ago Galaxy S3 and horrible mobile data connection. Where can i download this to ny computer or phone.?

Great read. Obama gives you some insight into how he came about discovering himself - how he sort of finds his place in this world. Dreams From My Father talks focuses on how he discovers who his father really was. But I find the book slightly "distant" - in the sense, I feel like I would like to know more - there're a lot of things left unsaid.

President Barack Obama’s books (”The Audacity of Hope,” and “Dreams from my Father”), are the work of a mind our contemporaries recognise as that of a man who came from unique circumstances and rose to be the leader of the world. The Election of President Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America means many things to different peoples: To African-Americans, he is a fulfilment of the Dream of Dr. King. To my LUO people of Kenya, he is their first President. To the world, he perhaps is the right medicine to a world divided and bedevilled by interracial, religious and ideological strifes. He inherited world hungry for food and medicine; he took over a world at war; he is managing a world threatened with total economic collapse; he is soothing a world tittering on a new scramble for increasingly scarce resources. Reading President Obama’s books (”The Audacity of Hope,” and “Dreams from my Father”), one has a reason to hope for the better from America, even though he is a product of a particular manner of governance. The first book, “Dreams from My Father,” introduces Obama to the world, and must be judged as a “master stroke” in the art of political persuasion, even before his Red-Blue-States Speech of 2004. In this first book, “Dreams from my Father,” Author Barack Obama, now President Barack Obama, tells the world this: this is me; this is how I was born; this is how I was raised; these are my beliefs and doubts; and this is what my journey has been, so far. By spilling out the cultural delicacies, including a cocktail of religious beliefs to have come his way–thanks to the mind of his inquisitive mother–; by admitting to having done all that is doable by a young man; by revealing that he struggled with questions about his race to the extent of even doubting himself and kin, Obama told the world in general, and America in particular this: I am not a perfect man; I know you; I am one of you; I understand your pain; I empathise with your daily struggles and doubts, even if you doubt my authenticity as an American, as an African, as a black man, as an African-American man, or as a Christian of Muslim ancestry. According to the narrative in “Dreams from my Father,” what is missing in his life as a young man is his mythical Kenyan father, whom he sees once before Obama Sr dies. The title of the book is a cry of what his youth could have been: perhaps a less troublesome; having someone to talk to man-to-man. But this is only a dream, because one cannot choose his parents!

About the author

Barack Obama was the 44th president of the United States, elected in November 2008 and holding office for two terms. He is the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize and the New York Times bestselling author of Dreams from My Father, The Audacity of Hope, and A Promised Land. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Michelle. They have two daughters, Malia and Sasha.