barack obama dreams from my father

The U.S president Barack Obama has written ‘Dreams from my Father’ in a splendid & lucid manner. It’s his life story. It’s a story of race & inheritance. Basically the book is a memoir. It’s an account of happenings in the lifetime of one of the most powerful persons in the world.

The storyline clearly shows the rise of this man from scratch; from dark & dingy days to days blooming with sunshine, luster, gleam & brightness. Everybody’s is inquiring about Obama since he ran for the presidential elections and finally became the president & here’s this book telling everything one wants to know about him. The book was first published in 1995 & republished in 2004.

Obama is the son of a white woman and a black father, born in Honolulu. Obama hardly met his father and formed an image of him only from the accounts he received from his mother and grandmother. The book retraces his path from Hawaii, Chicago, Indonesia, Nairobi, and New York to his homeland-Kenya. He did his basic schooling in Hawaii. He went to Los Angeles and got into Occidental college for his graduation. He gives a detailed description of the days when the blacks were treated roughly all over the world. Slowly he understood the impression of color discrimination and how tough it was to be an African-American. He details the years he spent working as a community organizer in Altegld gardens, Chicago. He did a lot to encourage black people and stood with them thus resolving many issues. He even writes about his habit of smoking !

Before joining the Harvard Law School, he goes back to Kenya to find his divided, alienated and multifaceted inheritance his father had left behind. There he finds his numerous brothers, several aunts, his father’s other wives. There Granny tells him about his grandfather Onyango & father Obama whom he calls ‘Old Man’. He develops deep respect for them and at the same time gets worried about the family size and problems they face. In Kenya he discovers his belonging to the Luo tribe. In sum, he discovers his lost world; his origins.

The book’s written with an honest description, reflecting his superior language skills and is a must read.

Book TV: Sen. Barack Obama “Dreams from My Father”