Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, by Barack Obama (1995, 2004).

Barack Obama tells his life story in three parts.  Part 1 covers his years growing up in Hawaii, Indonesia, and Hawaii again, ending with his move to the US mainland for college.  Part 2 looks at his three years as a community organizer in Chicago.  Part 3 recounts his trip to Kenya right before he entered law school.  An epilogue brings the story up to his marriage to Michelle.  He first published the book in 1995 when he was in his early 30s.

The book is a classic quest narrative of a young man searching for answers to three questions.  Who am I?  What shall I do?  What do I believe?

The Quest for Identity.  The son of a white American mother and a black African father is a complicated identity.  In the early chapters he is with his mother and her family, and in the latter chapters he connects with his father’s family and memory in Africa.  The circle closes when he is able to see his father’s and grandfather’s graves in Kenya and weep there.  He only met his father once while growing up, and like many young men, he struggled to understand himself in the absence of a father.  Also, he had to orient himself as a black man in a world run by whites.  His quest for identity had different layers to it.

The Quest for Vocation.  His most significant accomplishment in three years as a community organizer in Chicago was to get the city to deal with asbestos in the public housing projects.  He took a bus load of poor residents to the downtown office of the public housing director to protest the asbestos, and the media attention forced the authorities to act.  If only ‘the squeaky wheel gets the grease,’ then the role of a community organizer is to help the poor to squeak.  The vocation Barack Obama settled on was helping poor blacks find their voice and their power so they could better their lives.  He left Chicago to attend law school so that he could help them in more effective ways.

The Quest for Faith.  His fundamental faith is in the politics of black liberation.  This is his bedrock belief and commitment.  It took him years to find a religious faith that would support this.  He had religious training in Indonesia in a Catholic school and a Muslim school, but neither made an impression.  It was only much later, working with black ministers in Chicago, that he began to see the importance of black spirituality.  One minister, Jeremiah Wright, helped Barack Obama find a spiritual home at Trinity United Church of Christ, where he and Michelle would later be married.

This book held two surprises for me.  One was the recurring anger against whites and the white community — surprising because it’s a theme he avoids in his public persona now.  This sentiment wasn’t part of my perception of him till I read this memoir.  The second surprise was how much he smoked.  Often in the story he lights up a cigarette.  (He is smoke free now.)

Barack Obama is an eloquent writer.  I cannot imagine myself writing a book with this depth and power.  I commend this book for the insights it gives a reader into the life and motivations of our 44th President.