Barack Obama Memoir

Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer notes that for a memoir written by a senator and an aspiring presidential candidate, 'Dreams from my Father' by Barack Obama is a brilliantly candid document. True, the writer points out, that Obama was not a candidate when he penned the work in 1998. Still, he was clearly ambitious and had a future political and legal career on his mind and a potential agenda. He was a graduate of Harvard Law School, the editor of the prestigious Harvard Law Review, and in only two years he would be the Democratic junior senator from the largely Republican state of Illinois. The writer discusses that rather than affirm homilies about the goodness of America, Obama speaks openly about the difficulties of negotiating a viable sense of self and identity in contemporary America.

From the Paper:

"Obama discusses how he struggled to know who he was as a young man, racially and in terms of his future. He grew up in a divided America, still polarized by the ideological revolutions of the Civil Rights movement and the ant-war movement. The quest for stability and identity is something that most adolescents can relate to, but this intense self-examination is rarely expressed by politicians who often want to project a secure sense of self, to avoid being accused of waffling. Now that Obama's youth and supposed inexperience are an issue in the Democratic campaign for the nomination, he might regret some of his words in Dreams from my Father, but from the point of view of telling a good story, his tale is compelling because it is so easy to relate to his struggle, whether a reader is black or white, or of mixed race."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Obama, Barak. Dreams from my Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. Three Rivers Press, 2004.

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