Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #110 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-10
• Released on: 2004-08-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama was offered a book contract, but the intellectual journey he planned to recount became instead this poignant, probing memoir of an unusual life. Born in 1961 to a white American woman and a black Kenyan student, Obama was reared in Hawaii by his mother and her parents, his father having left for further study and a return home to Africa. So Obama's not-unhappy youth is nevertheless a lonely voyage to racial identity, tensions in school, struggling with black literature?with one month-long visit when he was 10 from his commanding father. After college, Obama became a community organizer in Chicago. He slowly found place and purpose among folks of similar hue but different memory, winning enough small victories to commit himself to the work?he's now a civil rights lawyer there. Before going to law school, he finally visited Kenya; with his father dead, he still confronted obligation and loss, and found wellsprings of love and attachment. Obama leaves some lingering questions?his mother is virtually absent?but still has written a resonant book. Photos not seen by PW. Author tour.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
Barack Obama, a black man raised by his white mother and grandparents, decided to journey to Kenya to learn more about his African father after receiving news of his death. This memoir is not about his father's life, but about Obama's, and he brings that home with an intimate tone rather than that of his public speeches. (His 2004 Democratic Convention keynote address is included at the end.) Throughout the book, the U.S. Senator looks at race from the point of view of someone who has seen and been part of a variety of cultures, and he explains how his perspective shaped his views. The book, written in 1995, before his election to the Illinois Senate, gives listeners a chance to learn more about a young senator who has recently made news by speaking out on the Patriot Act and President Bush's next Supreme Court nomination. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
Obama argues with himself on almost every page of this lively autobiographical conversation. He gets you to agree with him, and then he brings in a counternarrative that seems just as convincing. Son of a white American mother and of a black Kenyan father whom he never knew, Obama grew up mainly in Hawaii. After college, he worked for three years as a community organizer on Chicago's South Side. Then, finally, he went to Kenya, to find the world of his dead father, his "authentic" self. Will the truth set you free, Obama asks? Or will it disappoint? Both, it seems. His search for himself as a black American is rooted in the particulars of his daily life; it also reads like a wry commentary about all of us. He dismisses stereotypes of the "tragic mulatto" and then shows how much we are all caught between messy contradictions and disparate communities. He discovers that Kenya has 400 different tribes, each of them with stereotypes of the others. Obama is candid about racism and poverty and corruption, in Chicago and in Kenya. Yet he does find community and authenticity, not in any romantic cliche{‚}, but with "honest, decent men and women who have attainable ambitions and the determination to see them through." Hazel Rochman

Customer Reviews

Poetic Introspection
This amazingly frank memoir bares the soul of a confused and deprived, then ambitious and determined, man of his times. The multi-racial, multi-cultural, migratory experience of Barack Obama both reflects and defines the post-modern secular society that the United States has become in the 21st century. This masterfully told tale transcends the senator's own life to illustrate the trials and pain of the racial divide that persist both here and abroad. It portrays the chronically sad consequences of tribal and colonial history for Africans, Europeans and Americans.

By turns troubling yet hopeful, morose yet humourous, depressing yet inspiring, this book probes your emotions and challenges your worldview. Obama weaves an incredible tapestry of characters, places and moods with language more befitting a poet than a politician. His look inside himself is as deep and penetrating as his thoughts about the human condition. Although not everyone will agree with his conclusions, no one can deny his convictions.

Why can't we just call it shameless propaganda?
This is typical shameless garbage that the criminal elite use to promote themselves and their underlings. And don't be ridiculous and think that slick BHO even wrote this book. None of our phoney, criminal, deviant, controlled "leaders" ever write any of the shameless books that are attributed to them. Why do we continue to be so naive and foolish? Why do we continue to think that we live in any sort of democracy?

What can be said for sure about BHO is that he is an attractive man who can spew forth what is written for him in an eloquent manner. Oh, and he has nice white teeth. That's it folks, and I could care less what Oprah and all those little Hollywood turds gush about him, because BHO is a manufactured cut-out of a candidate who will be completely controlled by all the usual suspects. But, don't think just anyone could do what BHO does. He has a small army of helpers creating his image, dressing him, booking teeth whitening appointments, and white washing his past - especially on the internet. He has obviously had quite a bit of training in public speaking, but not just the "normal" type that you and I might sign up for. No, no. What he's been well trained in (as was Clinton, Reagan, and many others) is neurolinguistic programming (NLP) and subtle hypnotic/subliminal speech patterns. Of course it also helps a great deal that everywhere he speaks is "specially wired" for sound, which affects the audience in ways they probably couldn't comprehend or believe. This type of frequency manipulation of brain waves and body rhythms has been perfected for well over 2 decades. But, that's getting off topic...

In regards to this book, ... *** news flash *** After having spent about 5 minutes writing the above, I pushed "publish review" to get the process started and went for about a 3 minute bathroom break and then returned to finish writing, and when I returned there was already 3 "not helpful" votes registered for this review in that very, very short time frame. And you say you don't believe that a small army of "trolls" patrol the internet trying to misdirect and neutralize on behalf of the criminal elite??!!

Anyways, the amount of misdirection, inconsistency, undocumented statements / claims, and total shameless introspective pyscho mish-mash in this book is gut wrenching (in a bad way). But for a sane person searching for the truth, here are some questions to ponder: where was his father born in reality? how many wives / offspring did he have? as a "poor goat farming" family, how did he get the expensive initial education that he did? what are the connections to the Ford Foundation and the Rockefellers? where was BHO's mother born and why is there no records for the first 10 years of her life? if she was schooled in Lebanon initially, why? why can't the BHO Team produce a birth certificate from the State of Hawaii if he was born there? why did the BHO Team finally release a "document of live birth" that was shown to be a forgery? where was BHO born then? why was BHO's "maternal grandfather" working for the Rockefellers? why is there essentially no evidence that BHO went to Columbia University and why does he refuse to release transcipts in order to prove it? what is the connection of Indonesia to BHO really? And these are just a few questions a great researcher by the name of Don Nicoloff brings up in his writing for the Idaho Observer.

Here's my personal take: BHO

EXCEPTIONAL ON VIRTUALLY EVERY LEVEL
Out of all the autobiographies I've read of prominent men and women, and particularly those wih political ambition and desire for high office, I don't think I've ever read anything as frank and straightforward as this book of Obama's. Writing about oneself is difficult for most people most of the time, and here, describing one's childhood (or bi-racial childhood as Americans often say) involves displaying whatever conclusions you've reached as you assenbked your emotional and intellectual self, in different parts of this country, and in Indonesia, and that must surely have been profoundly difficult.

Considering the high level of education Obama's achieved, that the book is written well should be no surprise. But what is so amazing about all this is that currently the election campaign of Obama's Republican opponent is attempting to encourage the voting public that there is an impenetrable veil of mystery surrounding candidate Obama; mystery about his morals, his political affiliations, his religious obligations.. It seems obvious to me that anybody in this country or this world could find the man revealed with maximum clarity simply by reading this exceptional book. The latest Republican hocus-pocus is nonsense. It depends on the shameful racist tradition that says no white person can ever accept any level of intimacy -- certainly not an equitable one -- with any person of color, and that understanding would be a breach of caste.

We will be reading this splendid book for many years, both as adults and as students and children. It will become a young people's library classic.