Dreams from My Father

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Dreams from My Father
Author	Barack Obama
Country	USA
Genre(s)	Autobiography
Publisher	Three Rivers Press
Publication date	1995 (Re-released in 2004)
Pages	442
ISBN	ISBN 1-4000-8277-3 (Paperback reprint) ISBN 1-56836-162-9 (Paperback 1st ed)
Followed by	The Audacity of Hope

	This article is part of a series about Barack Obama	Barack Obama
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Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance is a memoir by President of the United States Barack Obama. It was first published in 1995 after Obama was elected the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, but before his political career began. The book was re-released in 2004 following Obama's keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention (DNC); the 2004 edition includes a new introduction by Obama, then a Senator-elect, as well as his DNC keynote address.

Contents 1 Narrative 2 Book cover 3 Basis for characters 4 Reception 5 Versions 6 References 7 See also

[edit] Narrative

The autobiographical narrative tells the story of the life of Obama up to his entry in Harvard Law School. He was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Obama, Sr. of Kenya, and Ann Dunham of Wichita, Kansas, both students at that time at the East-West Center of the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Obama's parents separated when he was two years old and divorced in 1964. Obama formed an image of his absent father from stories told by his mother and her parents. He saw his father only one more time, in 1971, when Obama Sr. came to Hawaii for a month's visit.^[1] The elder Obama died in a car accident in 1982.^[2]

After her divorce, Ann Dunham married Lolo Soetoro, an East-West Center student from Indonesia. The family moved to Jakarta. When Obama was ten, he returned to Hawaii under the care of his grandparents (and later his mother) for the better educational opportunities available there. He was enrolled in the fifth grade at Punahou School, a private college-preparatory school. Obama was one of three Black students among the majority Asian-American population at that school,^[3] and he first became conscious of racism and what it means to be an African-American.

Obama attended Punahou School from the 5th grade until his graduation in 1979. Obama writes: "For my grandparents, my admission into Punahou Academy heralded the start of something grand, an elevation in the family status that they took great pains to let everyone know."

Upon finishing high school, Obama moved to Los Angeles, where he enrolled at Occidental College, where he describes living a "party" lifestyle of drug and alcohol use.^[4][5][6] After two years at Occidental, he transferred to Columbia College at Columbia University, in Manhattan, New York City, where he majored in political science.^[6] Upon graduation, he worked for a year in business. He then moved to Chicago, working for a non-profit doing community organizing in the Altgeld Gardens housing project on the city's South Side. Obama recounts the difficulty of the experience, as his program faced resistance from entrenched community leaders and apathy on the part of the established bureaucracy. It was during his time spent here that Obama joined Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ.^[6]

Before attending Harvard Law School, Obama decided to visit relatives in Kenya. He uses part of his experience there as the setting for the book's final, emotional scene.

As well as relating the story of Obama's life, the book includes a good deal of reflection on his own personal experiences with race and race relations in the United States.

[edit] Book cover

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).^[7]

[edit] Basis for characters

With the exception of family members and a handful of public figures, Barack Obama is open in the preface about using changed names for privacy reasons and composite characters to expedite the narrative flow.^[8] Various researchers have suggested that the following characters are based on real people Obama knew:

Real life person	Referred in the book as
Salim Al Nurridin	Rafiq[9]
Margaret Bagby	Mona[10]
Hasan Chandoo	Hasan[11]
Earl Chew	Marcus[12]
Frank Davis	Frank[13]
Joella Edwards	Coretta[14]
Pal Eldredge	Mr. Eldredge[15]
Mabel Hefty	Miss Hefty[16]
Loretta Herron	Angela[17]
Emil Jones	Old Ward Boss[18]
Keith Kakugawa	Ray[19]
Jerry Kellman	Marty[20]
Yvonne Lloyd	Shirley[21]
Ronald Loui	Frederick[22]
Greg Orme	Scott[23]
Sohale Siddiqi	Sadik[11]
Bobby Titcomb	Jeff[24]
Wally Whaley	Smitty[25]

[edit] Reception

In discussing Dreams from My Father, Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison has called Obama "a writer in my high esteem" and the book "quite extraordinary." She praised "his ability to reflect on this extraordinary mesh of experiences that he has had, some familiar and some not, and to really meditate on that the way he does, and to set up scenes in narrative structure, dialogue, conversation--all of these things that you don't often see, obviously, in the routine political memoir biography. [...] It's unique. It's his. There are no other ones like that."^[26]

The book "may be the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician," wrote Time columnist Joe Klein.^[27] In 2008, The Guardian's Rob Woodard wrote that Dreams from My Father "is easily the most honest, daring, and ambitious volume put out by a major US politician in the last 50 years."^[28] Michiko Kakutani, the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic for The New York Times, described it as "the most evocative, lyrical and candid autobiography written by a future president."^[29]

The audio book edition earned Obama the 2006 Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.^[30]

[edit] Versions

• New York: Times Books; 1st edition (July 18, 1995); Hardcover: 403 pages; ISBN 0-8129-2343-X
  • This printing is now very rare. Only a few signed copies are known, and are estimated to be worth up to $13,000 (depending on condition).^{[citation needed]}
• New York: Kodansha International (August 1996); Paperback: 403 pages; ISBN 1-5683-6162-9
• New York: Three Rivers Press; Reprint edition (August 10, 2004); Paperback: 480 pages; ISBN 1-4000-8277-3
• New York: Random House Audio; Abridged edition (May 3, 2005); Audio CD; ISBN 0-7393-2100-5; Includes the senator's speech from the 2004 Democratic National Convention.
• New York: Random House Audio; Abridged edition on Playaway digital audio player ^[31]
• New York: Random House Large Print; 1st Large print edition (April 4, 2006); Hardcover: 720 pages; ISBN 0-7393-2576-0
• New York: Crown Publishers (January 9, 2007); Hardcover: 464 pages; ISBN 0-3073-8341-5
• New York: Random House (January 9, 2007); eBook; ISBN 0-3073-9412-3

Translations

• Chinese: The Dream Road of Obama : Yi Fu Chih Ming, translated by Yao-Hui Wang, Kuan-Lan Shih China Times Publishing Company, Taipei, Taiwan, (2008), ISBN 978-957-13-4926-8
• Dutch: Dromen van mijn vader, translated by Joost Zwart, Atlas, (2007), ISBN 978-904-500-089-3
• French: Les rêves de mon père, translated by [Paris] Presses De La Cité, Paris, France, (2008), ISBN 978-225-807-597-9
• Hebrew: Ḥalomot me-avi, translated by Edna Shemesh, Tel Aviv, Israel, (2008), OCLC 256955212
• Korean: Nae abŏji robutŏ ŭi kkum, translated by Kyŏng-sik Yi, Random House Korea, Seoul, Korea, (2007), ISBN 978-892-551-014-9
• Spanish: Los sueños de mi padre : una historia de raza y herencia, Vintage Español, New York City, New York, (2009), ISBN 978-030-747-387-5
• Swedish: Min far hade en dröm, Albert Bonniers förlag (2008), ISBN 9789100117283

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• Family of Barack Obama
• Luo (Kenya and Tanzania)

v • d • e Barack Obama Presidency Transition · Inauguration · Timeline · Judiciary (Supreme Court candidates) · Foreign policy · First 100 days Early life and political career Public image · Illinois Senate career · 2004 Democratic National Convention · U.S. Senate election in Illinois · U.S. Senate career · Presidential primary campaign · Obama–Biden 2008 · Electoral history · Political positions Books Dreams from My Father · The Audacity of Hope Speeches The Audacity of Hope · A More Perfect Union · Change Has Come to America · 2009 speech to joint session of Congress · 2009 speech at Prague · A New Beginning Family Michelle Obama · Barack Obama, Sr. · Ann Dunham · Lolo Soetoro (stepfather) · Maya Soetoro-Ng (half-sister) · Marian Robinson (mother-in-law) · Stanley Armour Dunham (grandfather) · Madelyn Dunham (grandmother) · Bo (dog) · Extended family · Family tree

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