“Dreams From My Father: A Story Of Race And Inheritance”
by Barack Obama
Published: August 2004
ISBN: 1400082773

(Updated: July 16, 2005.)

From the Publisher…

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.

A good book.

Interested in questions of "belonging", "race", identity of self, definitions of society/societies and, always, in questions and answers around what to do with it all, I enjoyed accompanying Mr. Obama in the description of his journey through the same.

I found the content generous in its sincerity and the writing honestly open. Many autobiographies seed past experience with "present wisdom" but this is not the case here. We truly are allowed to follow Mr. Obama through his journey and have the chance to learn much about ourselves in the process.

My “couldn’t wait to get back to it” rating is a four out of five hearts probably only because "real life" isn’t always amusing (and, no — I don’t mean that lightly).