dreams from my father | Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

book: Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance | Barack Obama

books:


	• Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance Barack Obama Three Rivers Press, 2004 - 480 pages average customer review:based on 544 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

Nothing about Inheritance

It took me (a person who reads a novel a week on average) 8 months to get through this book. I received it as a birthday present from my mother-in-law who thought it would be a good present for her "democratic son-in-law". It was a lovely thought, and appreciated. This book just doesn't fit the bill.

I did enjoy learning about Mr. Obama's childhood in Hawaii with his maternal grandparents and their attitudes toward race in contrast with the hate and angst coming from his "friends". I also really liked learning about his Kenyan relatives and their back story. The Chicago part of the book was really hard to get through and seemingly meaningless in relation to the purpose of the book.

Part of the problem here is that he stuck to a strictly linear telling of his life, with what he learned and when. But, what is most interesting and what influences us far more is our upbringing and our heritage (what this book seemingly purports to be about as well). Therefore, most of the last third of the book should have been up front and he should have given much more about his childhood.

Finally, I also felt like there was mostly just telling going on here (insert the infamous show versus tell tirade from English teachers everywhere). In other words, I got to hear about things that happened, but I never felt like I was there, as a part of it. This has to do with language and word choice mostly, but also because I never felt like I was inside Mr. Obama's head. I don't really know how he felt about different things or what connections he was making as he made them (which is kind of the purpose for telling the story linearly).

In summary, I felt like I got a good idea of the frustrations and difficulties of being a black man in America today (or, at least, 30 years ago), but I don't really see how this ties in with inheritance and his father's dreams.

If one of my college students turned in something like this for their own personal narrative, I would have given it a B- (a little above average for some things, but not meeting the needs of the assignment).

for more information click here

dreams from my father

When I read the book I was fascinated by Obama desribing his own youth, his problems, thoughts, encounters, in such a candid and frank way. I found the idea entrapping to listen to the book being read by the author himself. So I purchased the CD. And I like listening to it.
Moreover, I have a dyslexic student who comes to me once a week to study English. I am going to take parts of the book and use it in combination with the CD to train his understanding of written and spoken English.

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.

Pictured in lefthand photograph on cover: Habiba Akumu Hussein and Barack Obama, Sr. (President Obama's paternal grandmother and his father as a young boy). Pictured in righthand photograph on cover: Stanley Dunham and Ann Dunham (President Obama's maternal grandfather and his mother as a young girl).

for more information click here