E-book
Dreams from my father a story of race and inheritance
Record details
- ISBN: 9780307394125 (electronic bk. : Adobe Reader)
- ISBN: 0307394123 (electronic bk. : Adobe Reader)
- ISBN: 9780307394125 (electronic bk. : Mobipocket Reader)
- ISBN: 0307394123 (electronic bk. : Mobipocket Reader)
-
Physical Description:
electronic resource
remote
xvii, 442 p. ; 21 cm. - Publisher: New York : Crown Publishers, c2004.
Content descriptions
| Formatted Contents Note: | Originally published: New York : Times Books, c1995. Subsequently published in pbk. with preface and keynote address: New York: Three Rivers Press, 2004. This edition appears without keynote address. |
| Reproduction Note: | Electronic reproduction. New York : Crown Pub. Group, 2007. Requires Adobe Digital Editions (file size: 1769 KB) or Mobipocket Reader (file size: 410 KB). |
Search for related items by subject
| Subject: | Obama, Barack African Americans -- Biography Racially mixed people -- United States -- Biography Racism -- United States United States -- Race relations |
| Genre: | Electronic books. |
Other Formats and Editions
Electronic resources
- AudioFile Reviews : AudioFile Reviews 2005 October/November
Barack Obama, a black man raised by his white mother and grandparents, decided to journey to Kenya to learn more about his African father after receiving news of his death. This memoir is not about his father's life, but about Obama's, and he brings that home with an intimate tone rather than that of his public speeches. (His 2004 Democratic Convention keynote address is included at the end.) Throughout the book, the U.S. Senator looks at race from the point of view of someone who has seen and been part of a variety of cultures, and he explains how his perspective shaped his views. The book, written in 1995, before his election to the Illinois Senate, gives listeners a chance to learn more about a young senator who has recently made news by speaking out on the Patriot Act and President Bush's next Supreme Court nomination. J.A.S. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine - Choice Reviews : Choice Reviews 1996 February
Obama is only 33, which may seem rather young to write a memoir. But this son of a mixed marriage offers an account of his life's journey that reflects brilliantly on the power of race consciousness in America. His mother, a white woman from Kansas, and his father, a black African student, met in Hawaii; their marriage propelled Obama on a long search for personal identity in a world shaped by racial divisions. Along the way he achieved a good deal, graduating from Harvard Law School, where he was president of the Harvard Law Review. In recent years he has practiced civil rights law in Chicago and worked as a community organizer. He also developed much wisdom about racial struggle, the strength of family ties, the power of forgiveness, and the power of people to bind together in the face of adversity. Obama writes well; his account is sensitive, probing, and compelling. This book is appropriate for general readers and for academic libraries supporting African American studies or studies of modern American culture. Copyright 1999 American Library Association - Kirkus Reviews : Kirkus Reviews 1995 April
~ An honest, often poetic memoir about growing up biracial. Obama was the son of a Kenyan student at the University of Hawaii and a white woman, the daughter of transplanted Kansans. Their marriage broke up after Barack Obama Sr. left Hawaii in 1963 to pursue a Ph.D. at Harvard; he died in a car accident in Kenya in 1982, when his son was 21. The author met his father only once, when he was ten years old, and this encounter with a stranger did not resolve his emotional confusion about his identity. ``I was trying to raise myself to be a black man in America, and beyond the given of my appearance, no one around me seemed to know what that meant,'' writes Obama. He turned to books by Ralph Ellison and Langston Hughes and to neighborhood basketball courts, where he bonded with older black men. Obama records his interior struggle with precision and clarity as he confronts racism (a high school basketball coach calls a group of black men ``niggers'') while maintaining love for his white relatives. He turns to drugs and alcohol to dull his confusion, but finally realizes that his identity as a black man in America must be a path he creates for himself. Subsequently, while a student at Columbia University, he learns of his father's death just after they have made plans for him to visit Kenya. The unresolved nature of their relationship gnaws at him even after he moves to Chicago, where he practices civil rights law. A pilgrimage to Kenya to meet siblings from his father's two other marriages finally enables him to put his demons to rest. At its best, despite an occasional lack of analysis, this affecting study of self-definition perceptively reminds us that the dilemmas of race generally express themselves in terms of individual human struggles. (author tour) Copyright 1999 Kirkus Reviews - Publishers Weekly Reviews : PW Reviews 1995 April #2
Elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama was offered a book contract, but the intellectual journey he planned to recount became instead this poignant, probing memoir of an unusual life. Born in 1961 to a white American woman and a black Kenyan student, Obama was reared in Hawaii by his mother and her parents, his father having left for further study and a return home to Africa. So Obama's not-unhappy youth is nevertheless a lonely voyage to racial identity, tensions in school, struggling with black literature?with one month-long visit when he was 10 from his commanding father. After college, Obama became a community organizer in Chicago. He slowly found place and purpose among folks of similar hue but different memory, winning enough small victories to commit himself to the work?he's now a civil rights lawyer there. Before going to law school, he finally visited Kenya; with his father dead, he still confronted obligation and loss, and found wellsprings of love and attachment. Obama leaves some lingering questions?his mother is virtually absent?but still has written a resonant book. Photos not seen by PW. Author tour. (June) Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information. - SLJ Express Reviews : SLJ Express Reviews
Copyright 2022 SLJExpress.Gr 7 Up âTravels through both urban spaces in the U.S. and the countryside of Africa in his formative years shaped Obama into the man who would become the 44th U.S. President. This memoir, adapted fromDreams from My Father for the young adult audience, shows Obama growing from a child raised by a single mother and her parents into the teen "Barry" who smoked marijuana and cut class, then into a community activist and brilliant student. As the title suggests, the tale focuses on the subject's quest to learn about his absent Kenyan father, whom he only met once. It gives examples of how Obama, though raised in a predominantly white world (as well as in Hawaii, and briefly Indonesia), goes from being a biracial kid struggling with identity to a 20-something proud Black man. He eventually becomes a community organizer in the Southside of Chicago. Obama's journey to Kenya becomes an odyssey, leading him to immediate family, distant cousins, and stepmothers. He travels through the African continent to big cities, small towns, and countryside. Young adults who read this book, a quick read and less abstract than the adult version, will find bits and pieces of themselves among the pages. The former president demonstrates his well-known ability as a wordsmith and a storyteller in this narrative.VERDICT This title will be enjoyed by all readers for generations to come and is a must for all libraries' middle and high school biography shelves.âSherri Crawford
