The Makings of Obama

The life story of President Barack Obama is too well-known to repeat here.  However, having just read his acclaimed memoir Dreams From My Father (1995), I just had to add my two cents' worth to the growing discipline of Obamalogy.

[caption id="attachment_303" align="alignright" width="220" caption="Young Obama with his (from left) grand father, mother and half-sister Maya in Hawaii early 1970s. Picture sourced from wikipedia"][/caption]

Written after becoming the first African American president of Harvard Law Review and years before he ran for his first political office, the book strikes readers with the honesty and poignancy of the voice of a young African American man searching for his place in the world.

Born in Hawaii to a white American mother and a black Kenyan father, the young Obama feels trapped between two worlds, and groans under the unbearable burden of the 'unique and universal' history of his people in the US.  He recounts the angst and sense of helplessness felt by himself and his black college friends in a world in which they feel the rules of the game have been written by somebody else and even their perceived identity foisted on them by others.

The search for his identity takes Obama to the ancestral land of his forefathers in a remote village in Kenya.  There, he learns the full story of his own absent father, who, despite being a brilliant Harvard scholar, died a broken man thanks to a combination of his naive idealism, incurable character flaws and ancient tribal grudges.

Obama largely won his presidency in 2008 on the back of his sublime oratory reminiscent of Abe Lincoln. His simple, direct prose is equally a joy to read.

Towards the end of the book, a female African history professor that Obama meets in Kenya tells him, "In the end, I'm less interested in a daughter who's authentically African than one who is authentically herself." I think there is a priceless lesson for all of us in this beautiful thought.