Dreams from My Father
“Dreams from my father” was a book written by current United States president Barack
Obama and first published in 1995. It was later re-published after his senate victory in 2004. It is an autobiography, and reads more like a novel or story with his recollections of family and sequence of events. He wrote this book in part of one of his many memories about the variety of cultures he experienced throughout his childhood and trying to attain the dreams of his father.
Barack Hussein Obama II was born August 4 th
, 1961 in Honolulu Hawaii to father
Barack Obama Sr. who was African American and mother Ann Dunham who was Caucasian.
Part one of the book was titled “Origins” after a book his mother bought him as a child. His father moved back to Kenya when he was still young and he was left to live with his mother and his maternal grandparents Stanley and Madelyn Dunham.
Barack’s mother soon divorced Barack Sr. and remarried an Indonesian man by the name of Lolo Soetoro, Barack and his mother soon moved to Indonesia with her new husband Lolo where Barack lived for five years. He learned many things about different culture in the country and saw poverty first hand. When Barack was ten years old his mother sent him back to live with his grandparents in Hawaii. It was at this time he started to look at himself and to gain self confidence. He also started studying Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam and realized “with the right words, everything could change.”
Part two of the book entitled “Chicago” Barack focuses on the process of finding identity in the midst of strong racism in America. He ultimately realizes he will always be defined as a black man. He began using alcohol and marijuana heavily before his elders encouraged him to get an education. In receiving his degree from Columbia University he goes through some hard times as a college student and witnessing the terrible living conditions for the poor in Chicago, especially poor blacks.

Barack then meets a Jewish man by the name of Marty Kaufman, who he does a fund raising event to help the poor. It is here he addresses the root of the problem for poor blacks in Chicago and becomes quite an activist and doesn’t stop until he is accepted into Harvard law school.
The third and final part of the book is entitled “Kenya” He goes back to his father’s home land to discover his own roots and to find himself on a deeper level. He meets his large extended family and even his sister and is surprised and sometimes enlightened by the things around him in Africa. It is also at this time he truly learns a great deal about the poor and the true needs of people, this is where his politics developed into his leadership style today. He also sadly goes into detail about the loss of his father in a car accident while he was in Chicago.
Upon his return to America he is sadden by what he sees, “decay accelerated throughout the South Side – the neighborhoods shabbier, the children edgier and less restrained, more middle-class families heading out the suburbs, the jails bursting with glowering youth, and his brothers without prospects.” (Obama 438) He ends the book with the 2004 National Democratic
Convention.
All three parts related to discussions and “Racial and Ethnic Groups’ Part one brings in the family life we learned from African Americans in our text and the challenges to family stability. Even though I read that it is common to have single parent families among African
American families which coincided with the book, but also keeping with Barack’s morals and having the strong kinship and religious bonds of his small family. (Schaefer 238)
In part two we learn a lot about the poverty he is disgusted by in the book. He is also displeased to see that it seems to be mostly blacks that are homeless or poor. Our text tells us that the average income for black is around 35,000 dollars annually with the highest percentage of blacks making less than 10,000 dollars compared to that of a white man which is 65,000 dollars

annually. (Schaefer 234) This is one of the issues Barack Obama was and still is very determined to fix as well as the segregation of blacks as well.
The third part of the book focused on roots of culture. When Barack visits Kenya to see his family, he is surprised to see the joy in the simple things in life and what happiness truly is and sees what makes assimilation difficult for African Americans although Africans are the second highest racial group, compared to whites, in the United States at 12.3 percent (Schaefer 6)
Barack concludes with knowing he has to make the world a better place not just for blacks but for us all. He realized at an early age that words have immense power and he wants to use them for the better of mankind. After all, race is a social construction that benefits the oppressor, who defines who is privileged and who is not (Schaefer 14) Barack Obama already broke a major barrier with his election in 2008.
My brief summery however is no substitute for reading this book, and should be read by everyone in our current time. It is filled with good morals and you learn about a great man and is transforming presidency.

Works Cited
Obama, Barack . “Dreams from My Father” Crown Publishers, 2004
Schaefer, Richard T.
“Racial and Ethnic Groups” Eleventh Edition, Pearson Prentice Hall, 2008